Next week’s programme will feature works by Prokofiev, Smetana and Mendelssohn
This year’s Tenerife Viola Fest presents a concert bringing together four soloists from the Berlin Philharmonic and the festival’s director, Macarena Pesutic. The concert will take place next Thursday, 24 September, at 7.30 p.m. in the Chamber Hall, with a programme featuring works by Prokofiev, Smetana and Mendelssohn and spanning some of the great landmarks of the European chamber music repertoire from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The performers are Simon Roturier and Marlene Ito (violins), Naoko Shimizu and Macarena Pesutic (violas), and Ludwig Quandt (cello).
The concert opens with Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92, composed during the Second World War and drawing on traditional Kabardian themes. In it, Prokofiev combines the rhythmic drive and formal clarity of his musical language with a refined exploration of timbre inspired by the folk music of the Caucasus.
Next, Bedřich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, ‘From My Life’, offers one of the most intimate and autobiographical statements in the chamber music repertoire. In this work, the viola takes on a particularly significant role: far from being confined to a secondary harmonic function, it becomes a voice of profound expressive depth, articulating moments of introspection and dialogue that underpin the quartet’s emotional architecture.
The concert culminates with Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quintet in B-flat major, Op. 87, a masterpiece of German Romanticism admired for the elegance of its contrapuntal writing, the lyrical breadth of its movements and the remarkable balance it achieves between virtuosity and transparency of texture.
Tickets are priced at €15, or €5 for under-30s, and can be purchased on the Auditorio de Tenerife website www.auditoriodetenerife.com , at the box office from Monday to Friday, 10.00 a.m.–5.00 p.m., and on Saturdays, 10.00 a.m.–2.00 p.m., or by telephone on 902 317 327 during the same opening hours. Discounts are available for various groups, including students, jobseekers and large families.
The Tenerife Viola Fest is also hosting two events on Wednesday (the 23rd) at the Auditorio de Tenerife, aimed at members of Jocan and the Higher Conservatoire of Music. From 15:00, a cello masterclass by Ludwig Quandt for Ülker Turner will take place in the Sala, and at 16:30 there will be a talk in the Sala Alisios led by the artistic director of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra (JONDE), Ana Comesaña, and the managing director of the Es_Música Federation, Beatriz Ortega.