Chamber String Ensemble – London
4 October 2022
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London
Past Event
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What’s OnBach, Brahms & Enescu – The Architecture of the String Octet
“I wore myself out trying to make work a piece of music divided into four segments of such length that each of them was likely at any moment to break. An engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river, could not feel more anxiety than I felt when I set out to darken my paper” – George Enescu on writing his String Octet.
Before they head of on a tour of the USA, our Chamber String Ensemble will perform a programme of Bach’s Ricercar a 6, Brahms’ Sextet in Bb and Enescu’s enormous yet intimate Octet for Strings at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The notoriously complicated composition explores four segments of music, woven together with a number of intrinsic melodic themes, breaching the sound worlds of the harmonic and demonic. Whilst writing the work, Enescu likened the process to “an engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river”; we invite you to help discern the architecture of Enescu’s work and appreciate the power of the Octet.
Bach – Ricercar a 6
Brahms – Sextet in Bb Op 18
Enescu – Octet for Strings
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