Baroque hall Kloster Engelberg, October 27th to 29th, 2017

Dear Chamber Music Lovers,

We are looking forward to another intensive 3 days in Engelberg for the 3rd season of Festival "Zwischentöne"! Our theme this year "Art of the Fugue" will lead us to extremes of the musical spectrum. The spanish-german pianist Claudio Martinez Mehner, the prizewinning Castalian String Quartet from London and the exceptional actress from the ensemble of Zürich's Schauspielhaus, Friederike Wagner will join us for exciting encounters with this art form.

Beethoven writes "Tantot libre, tantot recherchée" (somewhat free, somewhat strict) over his "Great Fugue" Op 133, one of the most challenging and enigmatic masterpieces in classical chamber music. The term recherchée here comes from ricercare, the old term for strict fugal writing and our program includes a Ricercar by the greatest known master of the fugue: Johann Sebastian Bach. Numerous later composers grappled with the form: Haydn shows his brilliance in his "Fuga a quattro soggetti" (fugue on four themes) from Op 20, Mendelssohn takes the origin of the word literally (lat. Fuga from fugare = to flee) in the stormy Finale of his Octet Op 20 and Beethoven uses the strict form as a beginning from which to shatter the limits of convention. Even Paul Celan, in his "Deathfugue", creates a kind of fugue-poem by the repetition of motives.

So join us again this October for an exciting and diverse program, including introductory lectures, a musical monastery tour and the chance to meet the artists in the Festival Hotel Edelweiss or at the traditional after-concert dinner or apero.

Sincerely,
Rafael Rosenfeld and the Merel Quartet