Monday at Last with soprano

In Monday at Last, violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and cellist Kati Raitinen invite guest artists to perform both newer and older music. This time, the internationally acclaimed Swedish soprano Kerstin Avemo is the Monday guest.

Avemo has, among other things, received awards from Svenska Dagbladet and the Opera Magazine. She has performed on many of the world's great stages. A while back, she played all the female roles in The Tales of Hoffmann at the Gothenburg Opera, and on the same stage, she performed the only role in Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire – a production for which she also contributed the idea, concept, and direction.

Here, Avemo performs songs by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, which are brought into our time through Aribert Reimann's more modern adaptation. Schönberg wrote his passionate second string quartet during a marital crisis when his wife Mathilde temporarily left him for a young painter, Richard Gerstl. A soprano enters in the last two movements, and in the second movement, Schönberg quotes something that can be called a Viennese street song: Ach, du lieber Augustin. Mendelssohn and Schönberg frame Dvorák's idyllic Terzetto for two violins and viola.