The musical destiny is determined to make Catalonia a fertile land for quartets. Since the Casals lit up a path of interpretive excellence in the field of chamber music two decades ago, taking it to the most prestigious venues in the world, the panorama in Catalonia and the rest of Spain has radically changed. The Quartet Casals has generated followers among the public but also among the students, encouraging formations of surprising quality.
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Nowadays, the solvency of the Gerhard Quartet must be clearly contrasted with that of the Cosmos Quartet, which just begins this Tuesday, November 2, a three-year residency at the Palau de la Música Catalana (Petit Palau, 8pm). The room will broadcast it live via streaming and it will remain in the Palau Digital catalog.
We always try to be honest with the score and offer personal versions without influencing other versions already recorded “
Helena Satué and Bernat Prat (violins), Lara Fernández (viola) and Oriol Prat (cello) founded this quartet in 2014, the fruit of friendship, complicity and fascination for the repertoire. What identifies them and makes them special is a constant search, a curiosity “and that we do not settle for a first version of what we are doing,” explains Satué. “We try to be honest with the score and offer personal versions without influencing other versions already recorded.”
In these years they have received classes from Rainer Schmidt (from the Hagen Quartet), Hatto Beyerle (ex Alban Berg), Jonathan Brown (Casals), Krzysztof Chorzelski (Belcea) … or from the historic pianist Alfred Brendel, who said of them: “ Here is an ensemble with a personal sound and an approach that offers all the attention and assistance ”.
In those three years they will offer the complete quartets by Webern, Schumann and Brahms. The Palau broadcasts the first concert live
With two concerts per season (the second will take place on June 7, 2022), the Cosmos will address throughout these three years the comprehensive quartets by Anton Webern, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. “Webern has been with us from the beginning,” says violinist Bernat Prat. It is a very abstract music, dense and compressed, but at the same time brief, and it helped us to find a common language, a stamp “.
The components of the Cosmos Quartet in a stock image
As its integral is six works and the residency is six concerts, they thought it was worth offering a tasting each time. “The romantic language of Brahms also accompanies us (our first album included his Quartet no. 3 ) and Schumann’s. They both wrote three quartets, which is why they also helped us to organize the six concerts ”, adds Prat.
But it’s funny: Schumann wrote them in one summer, and Brahms over 16 years. This is something that can be perceived “and we have to translate it with our knowledge and transmit it to the public, closing the circle between composer, performers and audience,” says the violinist. And then there is the influence that they detect from some composers to others: Webern, he warns, would not have created a revolution if tonality had not reached where it did.
its Foursome 1905 that will be heard in this first concert of the Cosmos at the Palau residence is a youth work that is closer to Brahms than to the Webern that will take place later. And the last one they will play in the sixth concert is purely twelve-tone. “To understand each other, Webern’s first quartet is like The transfigured night of Schönberg or a Tristan and Isolde Wagner’s, nothing to do with later twelve-tone “.
They enrich these programs with the nationalisms of the European 20th century: Bartók, Shostakovich, Britten …
To enrich these programs and complement romanticism and post-romanticism, the Cosmos plans to integrate the nationalisms of the 20th century, a time of great European musical wealth, with Bartók, Shostakovich, Britten …, authors from different countries, who still coincide in the same At the moment they write in very different ways.
From the Palau the bet is strong, with the pride that both Helena Sautè and Bernat Prat debuted years ago in the modernist room as winners of the Primer Palau competition. In this residence they occupy the small room for the moment, but with a view that in some of the concerts, the presence of a renowned soloist makes it necessary to transfer them to the concert hall.
“We had been following them closely,” says Mercedes Conde, deputy artistic director of the Palau, and in the concert they gave in 2020 in our hall, as winners of the Montserrat Alavedra award, they left us impressed with their evolution. They have not been together for ten years and we wanted to give them carte blanche to develop ”.
Owners of four instruments by luthier David Bagué, the Cosmos have always wanted to cover the maximum repertoire
Possessing four instruments built by the Barcelona luthier David Bagué, the Cosmos have always wanted to cover the maximum possible repertoire. But faced with the complex debate on the historicist interpretation of the different repertoires, Satué points out that “we have always thought that the works were contemporary at the time and we try to make them so. And there is the revolution of the bows and instruments, of the bow of guts to the transition and then the romantics. But the most important thing is what you do and not what you do it with. “
“You can make a historicist interpretation playing modern instruments and a modern interpretation with historicist instruments,” Satué insists. “It’s more about how you treat the language and not the instruments. Yes, a gut bow, a baroque bow helps … you finally see that you can play a Haydn Quartet inspired by illustration and classicism but with our bows. Because changing the ancients would prevent us from doing a work by Bartók or Joan Magrané in the same concert “.
It has been difficult to stop being the students but now we can speak openly with the Casals, sometimes they even want to know what we think “
The relationship of the Cosmos with the Casals is an indication of the healthy evolution that this quartet has made: “I studied with them – Bernat Prat concludes – and there is a certain friendship, but it has cost us to stop being the student. Now we can talk about a more open way of interpreting, both theirs and ours and those of others. There are even times when they also want to know what we think. ”
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