Quatuor Hermès

Mozart - Webern - Korngold

Echoes of Vienna

Omer Bouchez, 1st violon
Elise Liu, 2nd violin
Lou Yung-Hsin Chang, viola
Yan Levionnois, cello

Vienna was in the throes of serious political unrest, forcing many of its artists into exile, when Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed his second string quartet in 1933, which premiered the following year in the Austrian capital. He thus celebrated, before it died out, the effervescence of a musical school that Mozart had been one of the instigators of more than 150 years earlier and that Anton Webern had helped to bring into the modern era. It is this lineage that the musicians of the Hermès Quartet highlight through a program with twilight overtones, in which each work displays a fascinating narrative force and could be the expression of a farewell.