Melos Quartet
The Melos Quartet , based in Stuttgart , was one of the most renowned string quartet ensembles in the world. It was founded in 1965 by Wilhelm Melcher (1st violin), Gerhard Voss (2nd violin), Hermann Voss (viola) and Peter Buck (cello) and existed for 40 years until 2005.
history
The founding members of the quartet were concert masters and section leaders in the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra in Heilbronn and in the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in the early 1960s , before they met for the first time in 1965 for quartet rehearsals and concerts. Just a year later, the Melos Quartet won their first international prizes, which were followed by numerous others. In 1967 the members gave up their orchestral positions in order to devote themselves entirely to playing the quartet.
The name " Melos " is, apart from the musical meaning (vocal line), a contraction of the member names Mel cher and V os s; Peter Buck lived in the founding years of the Quartet in Stuttgart Melo nenstraße.
After 28 years, Gerhard Voss left the quartet in 1993 because of differences of opinion with the other members that could no longer be bridged; he was replaced by Ida Bieler . A “Les Adieux” farewell tour was planned for 2005, but this did not take place because of the death of Wilhelm Melcher.
repertoire
By 1975 the quartet had built up a repertoire of 120 works, including the complete Beethoven, Schubert, Cherubini and Bartók quartets as well as works by Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Pfitzner, Verdi, Donizetti, Debussy, Smetana, Kodály , Janáček, Hindemith, Alban Berg, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Witold Lutosławski, Milko Kelemen, Wittinger and Horvath. The musicians deliberately chose a broad repertoire in order not to be tied to a specific time.
Record recordings
In 1969 the quartet signed their first five-year contract with Deutsche Grammophon , which was renewed in 1972 to include all of Schubert and Cherubini's string quartets. Most of the Schubert recordings of this period include a cello by Francesco Ruggieri (1682), a viola by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi (18th century), a first violin by Domenico Montagnana (1731) and a second violin by Carlo Annibale Tononi (18th century). Century).
Concert tours
The Melos Quartet undertook numerous tours around the world, to North and South America, Africa, in all European countries, the Middle East and the Far East, up to Novosibirsk in Russia. The members of the quartet were the first West German musicians to play a concert commemorating the events of 1943 in Volgograd (Stalingrad) in 1973. In the 1970s and 1980s the Melos Quartet gave around 120 concerts a year. It was thus one of the most internationally successful German chamber music ensembles.
Teaching assignments
The founding members of the Melos Quartet were lecturers for string quartet playing from 1975, and professors at the State University of Music in Stuttgart from 1980 .
Chamber music partner
The chamber music partners of the Melos Quartet included u. a. Franz Beyer , Piero Farulli , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Mstislaw Rostropowitsch , Arthur Rubinstein , Sir Georg Solti and Narciso Yepes .
literature
- Internationale Bachakademie (Ed.), Dieter Kölmel: Musikland Baden-Württemberg: Base and top. Kohlhammer Verlag, 2007, p. 100 f, ISBN 978-3170194281
Web links
- Discography Melos Quartett on Discogs
- DIE ZEIT May 4, 1990 The pieces have remained the same - a huge house in which we know every corner : Four sensible people - Twenty-five years of the Melos Quartet
- Brahms String Quartet No. 2 Concert by the Melos Quartet at the Spanish Royal Court in 1992, music is played on instruments from the royal Stradivari collection
- The Melos Quartet. Four lives for chamber music. A film by Klaus Kirschner (1988)
Individual evidence
- ^ KulturStadtLev: Melos Quartet (farewell tour) , leverkusen.com, February 7, 2005
- ^ History of the Melos Quartet, on the Klassik-heute website
- ↑ Review of the recording of all of the string quartets by Brahms and Schumann ( memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Pfluger, Rolf: "The Melos Quartet (Stuttgart)." Austrian music magazine, January 31, 1976, pages 54 to 55
