Minetti Quartett

The Minetti Quartet’s name is from a play by author and dramatist Thomas Bernhard. They participated in Rising Stars 2008–09 and debuted at Konserthuset Stockholm in 2009. Since then, they have regularly performed at the major concert halls in cities including Vienna, Berlin and London.

The quartet by Mozart in the programme is the third of the so-called Prussian Quartets – dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II, king of Prussia and amateur cellist. It is Mozart’s last quartet and among other things, the music offers a taste of unexpected harmonic turns. 

The versatile Austrian musician and composer Ángela Tröndle (born 1983) composed the string quartet Gifts of the Night for the Minetti Quartet in 2020. Now she is back with a new quartet for the same ensemble. She calls it Movements from a common ground and it was inspired by a personally experienced feeling of vibrations, which then were the starting point for the music to grow.

When Schumann ultimately decided to compose his first quartets, he had studied examples by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in great depth. Schumann’s only three string quartets are part of Op. 41 and are dedicated to his wife Clara for her twenty-third birthday. She commented, “Everything in them is new, clearly considered and skilfully worked out – always idiomatic.” We hear the third and last of them.