Festival Forum Valais: Minguet Quartet

Participants

Minguet Quartet

PROGRAM

Morton Feldman

String Quartet No. 2 (1983)

Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2 is the longest in the history of the genre. It is quiet, slow and of beguiling beauty; some listeners feel that the music gradually becomes part of the environment, others have the feeling that time is suspended, that one is confronted with the problem of remembering and forgetting. The extreme length gently tests the listener's ability to concentrate; as a result, the listener can experience a transformation - a spiritual experience.

Performers

Minguet Quartet

Ulrich Isfort First violin

Annette Reisinger Second violin

Aida-Carmen Soanea Viola

Matthias Diener Violoncello

Founded in 1988, the Minguet Quartet is one of the most sought-after string quartets internationally and performs in all major concert halls worldwide. Its patron saint is Pablo Minguet, an 18th century Spanish philosopher who endeavored to give the people access to the arts - an idea to which the Minguet Quartet feels committed on its concert tours. The ensemble has performed at venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Bozar in Brussels, the Southbank Centre in London, New York's Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress in Washington and the University of Hong Kong. Invitations have taken them to the Beethovenfest Bonn, Brucknerfest Linz, Grafenegg Festival, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Rheingau Music Festival, Mozartfest Würzburg, Schwetzinger Festspiele, DIALOGE Music Festival and the Tongyeong International Music Festival. The quartet concentrates equally on classical-romantic music literature and modern music. Encounters and world premieres of contemporary composers have inspired the four musicians to constantly develop new program ideas. The complete recordings of the string quartets by Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka and Jörg Widmann are among their most important projects, alongside the complete string quartet literature by Felix Mendelssohn, Josef Suk and Heinrich von Herzogenberg. The complete recording of Walter Braunfels' chamber music was released in 2022, and in 2023 they published string quartets by Glenn Gould and Heinrich Kaminski. In 2010, the Minguet Quartet received an ECHO Klassik award, in 2015 it was awarded the French Diapason d'Or and in 2020 it was selected for the Reload scholarship program of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

From June 4 to 7, the Festival for New Music Forum Wallis is coming to Münster in Goms with 6 concerts. The Forum Wallis festival has been promoting contemporary music in Valais for 20 years and has given hundreds of world premieres and presented works by over 500 composers from all over the world. It is run by the Valais chapter of the International Society for New Music IGNM-VS, whose board includes Manuel Mengis and Hans-Peter Pfammatter as well as the two musicians and composers Javier Hagen (festival director) and Ulrike Mayer-Spohn, who have been based at the MEbU in Münster since 2022.

Further information: http://forumwallis.ch

Admission free (collection)

Reservations recommended: office@forumvalais.ch / mebu@umsnjip.ch