Tuesday, 11th September 2012 at 18:30
Dornava Mansion Hall, Dornava

Performers:
Satu Vänskä – violin
Rebecca Chan – violin
Christopher Moore – viola
Timo-Veikko Valve – cello

Program:
Peteris Vasks: String Quartet No. 2 (Summer Tunes) (1977-1997)
Arvo Pärt: Da Pacem Domine for string quartet (2004/2006)
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Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 9 in E flat Major, Op. 117 (1964)

The most important monument of Baroque architecture in Slovenia and our concert venue for tonight is the Dornava Mansion. Leading to it is a tree-lined alley and a wonderful natural garden surrounds the mansion that hides the word “Dorn” (Thorn) in its name.

This amazing music in tonight’s program was also created in a time not really strewn with roses, since the composers in one way or another all found themselves oppressed by the ideological system of the Soviet Union.

Vasks’s Second String Quartet brings the characteristic combining of tonal sections with passages dominated by aleatorism and emancipated dissonance. The work’s subtitle – Summer Melodies – expresses the composer’s love of nature and his sensitivity towards ecological issues, which is evident primarily in passages in which one can recognise the imitation of birdsong.

Arvo Pärt's composition De Pacem Domine for four vocal soloists or choir (at the present concert we will hear the version for string quartet) unfolds in a very slow meditative tempo and is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the bombing in Madrid 2004.

Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 9 is conceived symphonically, as had been characteristic of the quartets of the post-war period. He dedicated it to his wife Irina, whom he married in 1962.

BUS TRANSFER FROM MARIBOR TO DORNAVA: 11th September

DEPARTURE: at 17:00 from Trg Generala Maistra, Maribor
RETURN: at 20.00 from Dornava Mansion to Maribor
PRICE: 3 € one way or 6 € return (bus to be paid on the bus)