2023-08-27 05:59:36
The Casals Quartet, a pioneering training that has marked the way for a whole new batch of string quartets in Cataloniaporta the celebration of his twenty-five years of uninterrupted career at the Vilabertran Schubertíada. Vera Martínez Mehner, Abel Tomàs Realp, Jonathan Brown and Arnau Tomàs Realp, the four performers of this reference on a European scale in chamber music, return this afternoon to the canonical of Santa Maria for to be in charge of the closing of the Schubertíada, one of the first events he bet on for them, in 1997. Since then, they have performed there on forty occasions, sometimes with more than one recital per edition.
Jordi Roch, the soul of the Alt-Empordà festival, was one of the “discoverers of the quartet”, explains Arnau Tomàs, and, from their first year as a group, Vilabertran “has always been a fundamental piece in the career of the Quartet Casals”.
“Participations in the Schubertíada are very emblematic concerts for us”, says the member of a formation that was born at a time when there was no tradition of stable string quartets in Cataloniaand now it is example and mirror for new generations of musicians, with quartets such as Cosmos, Gerhard or, more recently, Athenea, who see them as references.
The Schubertíada, the great classic event of the summer in Vilabertran
“When we started, our initial objective was to consolidate ourselves as a stable group, full-time, to do concerts in quartet format, because that didn’t exist here”, explains Arnau Tomàs, who when he looks back assures that everything ‘has been doing it “step by step and with a lot of work”.
Not even, he points out, having won first prizes in the London and Hamburg International Competitions in the beginning was a guarantee of anythingbecause “international competitions are an important trigger, especially to open the doors of agents and get gigs, but then you have to work hard”.
In this quarter of a century of history, he affirms, the core of the Casals Quartet is the same as that of the beginning, but “the development is very different, because the group has grown a lot and picked up a lot of musical language culture along the wayhas taken many classes and worked with many teachers who have left their mark by forging the aesthetics of the quartet.’
“The gearing is perfect, the instrument is made and the speed at which we can perform new repertoire or study what we had already played is much higher than ten or fifteen years ago”, continues the cellist.
Erika Baikoff, a new young promise to open the 31st Vilabertran Schubertíada
The Casals are currently one of the mainstays of chamber music in the country, both for the excellence in their work and for his contribution encouraging many young musicians to dare with the quartets.
“When we started we were a bit of pioneers in Catalonia and since Esmuc we have also influenced other quartets who have seen us as a source of inspiration. Sometimes I think we will be remembered more as teachers than as performers, because our work has transcended so much in the classroom… Now you’re starting to see a couple of generations of musicians who are already doing concerts or have just trained abroad and who tell you about the memories they have of our classes and that’s very satisfactory”, underlines Arnau Tomàs.
Vilabertran, “the Gamper”
The quartet, which performs assiduously in the best halls of Berlin, Vienna or Paris, is since 2018 the person responsible for the closing of the Schubertíada, where they feel at home. “For us it is the pre-season, Vilabertran is the Joan Gamper of the Casals Quartet», jokes Tomàs, because the canonical concert is the starting point for a busy concert schedule that takes them all over the continent.
This time they perform there, with sold-out tickets, to interpret the project with which they celebrate the quarter century, “a true musical monument”: The art of escape de Bach.
The piece, which they have recorded with Harmonia Mundi and played in coliseums such as the Cologne Philharmonic or the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, is Bach’s last work, in which he defended the fugue genre at a time when was dying out to give way to classicism.
“It tries to demonstrate the possibilities of escape, it’s like a testament to claim it, and that makes it a wonder: it’s just a very simple subject, of which he makes eighteen counterpoints. It is an almost mathematical work but at the same time aesthetic», explains Arnau Tomàs about the composition, which predates the string quartet and was written for four undefined voices.
“It has a lot of architectural complexity, it calls for deep work on the part of the performer, who has the challenge of making it as understandable as possible for the audience, and that it doesn’t sound all mixed up”, he explains.
Looking ahead to the coming season, the main project of the Casals Quartet will be the complete Shostakovich, with the recording of the fifteen quartets.
The program for his participation in the 2024 Schubertíada is not yet clear, but yes, notes Tomàs, the Gamper will be played again in Vilabertran.
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