Concerts and musicians ...

Over the last month things have developed and the Quartet of Peace seems to be finding its own identity!

Valerie Pole (above)  has now become the project Co-ordinator and in a short space of time has done some amazing things! She has undertaken the project with real passion and commitment to make sure that the concerts are in alignment with the ideals expressed by the quartet and are run smoothly.

A few days of synchronicity brought the musicians together to form the quartet!  It was a phone call form Eugene Skeef in London that got the ball rolling after he had miraculously secured Kings Place in London for the 5th of December which is usually booked up well in advance ... the one criteria though was that we needed to have the musicians and program ready in two days time! I was thrilled as the one amazing thing about Kings Place as a concert venue (above) is that the concert hall is built from one 500 year old oak tree!

So within the space of about three hours we had the commitment of four world class South African string musicians!  The enthusiasm for these concerts from the musicians is quite incredible and there is a unified vision that we all share; that of using these concerts to  benefit Musequality which supports music projects to some of the poorest children in the developing world.

The inaugural concert on the quartet will be played in St. Thomas Church (above) in Leipzig, Germany. One could not ask for a more appropriate venue as this is the church where the great Johan Sebastian Bach was choir director and is buried. The quartet will begin the concert performing excerpts from "Art of the fugue".

Here is a list of the concerts to date:

17th November - St. Thomas church, Leipzig, Germany

5th December - Kings Place, London

7th December - Ljubljana, Slovenia (European Union House concert)

Then other planned concerts will be at the European Parliament in Brussels, The United Nations in Geneva and in Paris. These dates still to be confirmed, but the concerts will be during December 2010.

The musicians of the quartet are:

First violin: David Juritz (leader of the London Mozart Players).

Second violin: Susanne Martens (previous concertmaster of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and member of the Rosamunde Quartet).

Viola: Gareth Lubbe (principal viola of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Germany).

Cello: Peter Martens (previous principal cellist of the Cape Town Philharmonic  Orchestra and member of the Amici String Quartet).

The program for these concerts will be: 

The Art of the Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach
The work was most likely started at the beginning of the 1740s, if not earlier.. It contains 14 fugues and 4 canons. "The governing idea of the work", as the eminent Bach specialist Christoph Wolff put it, is "an exploration in depth of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject."
Ravel String Quartet in F Major
Maurice Ravel completed his String quartet  in F major in early April 1903 at the age of 28. Dedicated to his friend and teacher Gabriel Fauré, the work was introduced in Paris  by the Heymann Quartet on March 5, 1904. The quartet follows a strict four movement classical structure: Moderato très doux begins as a sonata form allegro, the following Assez vif-Très rythmé functions as the quartet's scherzo, while Très lent acts as a contrasting foil. The last movement, Vif et agité, reintroduces themes from the earlier passages and ends with a striking finale. 

String Quartet No. 19 in C Major by Mozart
The String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nicknamed "Dissonance" on account of its unusual slow introduction, is perhaps the most famous of his quartets. It is the last in the set of six quartets composed between 1782-1785 that he dedicated to Joseph Haydn.
Uxolo (Zulu/Xhosa for forgiveness) by Eugene Skeef
“I am writing what I believe will be a beautiful piece, not least of all because the concept and spirit of the Quartet of Peace is truly humanising.”