Formed from soloists of the Vienna Philharmonic, the Wiener Kammerensemble is one of the most authentic interpreters of works by composers of the classic Viennese chamber music tradition. Musicians who play from night to night under the batons of the world’s greatest conductors in Vienna’s Musikverein, the Vienna State Opera or other time-honoured concert halls now step into the spotlight at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall to show off their skills in a more intimate context, and to familiarise us with a selection of wonderful masterpieces each separated from the next by some 25 years, and each characteristic of a different giant of the Viennese style. Mozart wrote his Divertimento in D major at the age of 17, at the halfway point of his life, to mark the name day of Maria Anna Elisabeth von Antretter, the wife of a Salzburg military counsellor. The piece uses an unusual orchestration of two horns, bassoon and strings. Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat major appears to be the product of another period when measured against the Viennese Classics: written in 1800, on a commission from the composer’s friend and patron Prince Lobkowitz, it further explores the possibilities of a genre already elevated to perfection by Haydn and Mozart. Schubert’s Octet in F major from 1824 is one of the pinnacles of European chamber music and one of Schubert’s largest-scale works, written for the same Archduke Rudolf who also commissioned works from Beethoven.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest