Damsco Quartet - East to West

Program:

Chinese Folk Song “Yasmine Flower” (“Mo Li Hua”), arr. for string quartet

Sulkhan Tsintsadze - from Miniatures for Strings:

-Indi Mindi

-Shepherd’s Song

Béla Bartók - Romanian Dances, arr. for violin and cello

Maurice Ravel - String Quartet in F major

-II. Assez vif - très rythmé

Henriëtte Bosmans - String Quartet

-I. Allegro molto moderato

Antonin Dvorak - String Quartet No.12 in F major, Op. 96

-I. Allegro ma non troppo

The storyline of the concert is bringing pieces together from our different countries of origin. It is the understanding of different cultures and their heritage where we develop the free mind.

We start with Yuxin and the Chinese traditional folk song - This song with a beautiful melody is deeply embedded in the culture. We travel further west and reach Georgia, the gateway between Asia and Europe. Nata talks about the meaning of music in Georgia and what it is used for - two Miniatures are being played from Tsintsadze. Daniel is half Hungarian and talks about similarities between the different Eastern-European folk music traditions - the famous Romanian Dances by Bartók will be played, which is a feast for the ears. A whole different sound-world follows with Ravel’s String Quartet. Manon talks about the inspiration of Ravel that has a basis in oriental music - the listener can clearly hear that the music depicts another world, something far and unreachable. We arrive in the Netherlands where we perform music from a female composer, Bosmans. Daniel will tell shortly about Dutch classical music around that time and about the close relation with French music, like that of Ravel and Debussy. Like French music, this piece also has oriental inspirations. This piece starts with a pentatonic (Chinese) melody in the viola. Dvorak was an Eastern-European composer, who also had interests in folk music. He visited the US and was fascinated with the “New World”. From this fascination came his famous 9th Symphony and his American string quartet. The interesting thing is that in his music he also uses pentatonic melodies, which again have an oriental association, completing our journey around the world.

Our journey concludes that all cultures have fascination for each other and take-over elements, whether it’s philosophy , science or like we see today, music.