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String sextet

Friedensgesang, song for peace

With Emmanuelle Bertrand, cello and Aurélia Souvignet Kowalski, viola

In 1889, the great Austrian pacifist activist Bertha von Suttner published her manifesto "Die Waffen nieder!", which became a worldwide bestseller. A friend of Alfred Nobel, she strongly encouraged him to create the Nobel Peace Prize, of which she herself was the first woman to win in 1905. In evoking the indefatigable Bertha von Suttner, a whole vision of the world is grafted on : The Vienna of 1905, the year of composition of Webern's "Langsamer Satz", a Vienna in full literary, intellectual and musical effervescence ; the Vienna of Stefan Zweig, the one he describes in "The World of Yesterday", the open, curious, creative Vienna dreaming of Europe ; the one that carries the legacy of Beethoven and Brahms, the one of Freud, Schnitzler and Rilke.

 

Webern : Langsamer Satz

Beethoven : Quartet No. 16, Op. 135

Brahms : 2nd string sextet op. 36 OR Schönberg : Transfigured Night

Emmanuelle Bertrand © Philippe Matsas
Aurélia Souvignet Kowalski  © DR