COSMOS QUARTET AND JUAN PÉREZ FLORISTÁN. Brahms Quintet

REPERTOIRE

Robert Schumann: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 41 (1842) 31′
Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela: Patres II (2024) 12′
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 (1864) 41′

ARTISTS

Bernat Prat, violin
Helena Satué, violin
Lara Fernández, viola
Oriol Prat, cello
Juan Pérez Floristán, piano

Programme

The Cosmos Quartet, one of today’s most exciting Catalan ensembles, will be joined by pianist Juan Pérez Floristán to perform Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, one of the most stimulating works in the chamber music repertoire. Perhaps due to the uniqueness of the instrumentation, it took Brahms some time to find a way to blend the strings with the piano —in fact, he drew much of his inspiration from Franz Schubert’s String Quintet rather than the piano quintets. The result is relentlessly beautiful, at times dark and anguished; it is a harmonically experimental piece with excellent handling of the individual melodic lines. 

The Barcelona-based quartet will also play the String Quartet No. 3, Op. 41, by Robert Schumann, a composer closely associated with Brahms. The chosen quartet, of a disturbing character, harmonically unstable and with expressionist echoes, forms part of a series of three quartets which, due to their complementarity, have even been described as “a triple quartet in twelve movements”. 

The programme will be completed with Patres II (2024) by Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela, the second of two string quartets that share the same title and with which the Valencian composer sought to push the sonic boundaries of the bowed string. The piece features on the latest album from the Cosmos Quartet, Influences III (2024).