First concert of the OSR’s chamber music season

This Sunday, 10 September, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande will give the first concert in its chamber music series, supported by the Etrillard Foundation, at the Geneva Conservatoire of Music.

The programme, entitled ‘Arpèges’, will feature a Trio, a Quartet and a Quintet for harp and strings.

Highly prized in the 18th century, the harp also inspired composers of the last century, who often combined it with strings. Jacques Ibert wrote his Trio for violin, cello and harp following an exchange of cigarettes (which were very rare in France in 1944) with his daughter, an excellent harpist. With a style that was as extraordinarily verbose as it was anachronistic, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos – a great friend of France, where he studied and often stayed – wrote for all manner of rare instrumental combinations, such as this splendid Instrumental Quintet. The latter was composed in 1957 in a style that owed nothing to folklore and everything to the French spirit he loved so much. ‘Es ist Dreck!’ [‘It’s rubbish!’] Beethoven had declared of his String Quartet. An unfair and unkind judgement for a work in which the young composer is, on the contrary, in full command of his early style.

Featuring:

Rosnei Tuon and Eleonora Ryndina on violin; Verena Schweizer on viola; Olivier Morel on cello; Sarah Rumer on flute; Valerio Lisci on harp