By the Roterodamus Ensemble-String Quartet

Weense sferen: van concertzaal naar een intieme Schubertiade

Programma:

-Ludwig van Beethoven: Strijkkwartet op. 18 nr. 1 

-Franz Schubert: Rosamunde kwartet nr 13

Twee verrassingsliederen van Schubert, gearrangeerd voor strijkkwartet

Program:

Paul Hindemith – Minimax for string quartet

Kurt Weill – Youkali (arranged for string quartet)

Alexander Borodin – String quartet nr 2

This program shines a light on composers whose voices were once overshadowed or suppressed under regimes that sought to control art and thought. Their music—once labeled “degenerate” or simply unwelcome—now speaks freely again: vital, expressive, and deeply human.

Paul Hindemith’s Minimax opens with satire and surprise. Full of wit, parody, and even marching-band humor, it is a miniature theatre of sound—playful on the surface, yet edged with irony and defiance.

Kurt Weill’s Youkali, originally a song of longing for an imagined paradise, appears here in a tender arrangement for string quartet. Its tango-habanera rhythm carries both fragility and yearning—the dream of peace, love, and joy that forever seems just out of reach.

Alexander Borodin’s radiant String Quartet No. 2 closes the program with warmth and lyrical freedom. Written long before the storms of the 20th century, it offers a vision of human connection and hope—the very world that Weill could only dream of.

Together, these works trace a journey from irony to longing to renewal.
They remind us that creativity cannot be silenced: even under repression, the human spirit keeps composing, keeps singing, keeps believing.

At a time when war and censorship still silence artists around the world, this music stands as both remembrance and quiet resistance—a celebration of the fragile, essential freedom to create and to feel.

These are staged versions, but for the concert can be staged or not staged and Youkali will be played in an arrangement for string quartet.