The string quartet will interpret works of Debussy, Poulenc, Fauré, Ravel, Satie, Mendelssohn and the contemporary composer Trotignon.
The Auditorio de Tenerife has scheduled for Thursday, 3 April, at 7:30 p.m. in its Chamber Hall the concert Impresiones parisinas (Parisian impressions), interpreted by the French string quartet Van Kuijk. The ensemble will interpret the works of Debussy, Poulenc, Fauré, Ravel, Satie and Mendelssohn. In addition, the quartet will perform pieces that bear the influence of these composers, which were created under the quartet’s commission of French composer and pianist Baptiste Trotignon.
Violinist Nicolas Van Kuijk is at the helm of the quartet, whose other members are violinist Sylvain Favre-Bulle, violist Emmanuel François and cellist Anthony Kondo. The ensemble’s international accolades include top prizes for Best Beethoven and Best Haydn at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, First Prize and Audience Award at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition, and its winning of the Académie du Festival d’Aix. The BBC acknowledged the quartet as a New Generation Artist from 2015 to 2017 and recognised it as ECHO Rising Stars for the 2017-18 season.
Following such high success early in its career, the ensemble is an established presence at major international venues, with performances at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Philharmonie of Paris, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Musikverein in Vienna, among others, and at festivals such as the BBC Proms, Cheltenham, Heathrow and London’s Konserthuset; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Tivoli Concert Series, Denmark, and Konserthuset, Stockholm. Upcoming tours will see the quartet make highly anticipated debuts at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Sydney Opera House, the Melbourne Recital Centre and the UKARIA in Australia, and the Shanghai Symphony Hall.
Baptiste Trotignon has said, ‘The string quartet, which has been the highest form of chamber music for several centuries, offers unlimited potential for exploration, from sophisticated and complex composition to more free-form works. This is an enormous challenge and an aesthetically exciting adventure for me. Ten years after the quartet commissioned him for the first time (Empreintes in 2014), he was contacted anew by the ensemble for the composition of five pieces freely based on Poulenc, Fauré, Ravel, Satie and Debussy, with particular emphasis on the musical language of French melodies, the use of which features prominently in the works of the said composers.
The result is a loving evocation in which all necessary liberties have been taken to ensure the pleasure of composing, satisfy certain wishes, and fantasise with sounds and some rhythmic agitations. The composer recalls that ‘all these wishes were more than fulfilled in the first readings of the Quartet Van Kuijk, which were full of lyricism, precision, joy and audible beauty’. Trotignon reveals, “I also enjoyed occasionally inserting references to American music, even Radiohead, in one of the pieces.”
The tickets can be purchased at a single price of €15 and €5 for under 30s on the website www.auditoriodetenerife.com, at the auditorium’s box office, or by dialling the phone number 902 317 327 from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Check the special discounts for, among others, students, unemployed people and large families.