Does the flute sound different in different line-ups? How will the flute playing together with a string quartet present itself in a diverse repertoire? How does the musical texture affect the perception of its timbre? To answer these questions, the musicians of the Lutosławski Quartet will join forces with Carlos Bruneel – a Belgian flautist, whose victory in the prestigious Tenuto competition many years ago springboarded him to an international career.

Asian inspirations will be strongly marked in the repertoire prepared by the musicians. The contemporary composer Toshio Hosokawa (a student of Brian Ferneyhough) in his flute works, such as Fragmente II, on the one hand refers to the Japanese tradition of playing ryūteki instruments, flutes used in the nō theatre or bamboo shakuhachi, on the other – uses the full spectrum of modern articulation techniques. However, both attitudes are only seemingly contradictory – the sound of loud breathing amplified by a resonating instrument, for example, admitted into European music only in the 20th century, has long been a standard means of expression in Japan.

The British composer Jonathan Harvey also found inspiration in the traditions of the East. In the 1980s, he became interested in transcendental meditation and Buddhism. In the Lotuses, the author shows off his mastery of timbre and joins the flute and strings together invitingthem to a bizarre joint dance. The key to the interpretation of the work may be Buddhist symbolism – in this tradition the lotus is, not surprisingly, a symbol of the world of forms and enlightenment.

The representative of the Classical European repertoire will be the Rondo in D major, whose authorship is usually attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The version performed in the NFM Chamber Hall will basically be a double arrangement. Mozart’s original work is in fact the Rondo in C major for violin and orchestra, KV 373. The version for flute and orchestra catalogued KV Anh. 184 was not produced by Mozart (which, however, does not diminish it musically in any way), and it is on its basis that the Spanish flautist André Cebrián developed his version for flute and string quartet, which will be presented by the musicians tonight.

After the intermission, the artists from the Lutosławski Quartet will perform their own version of Witold Lutosławski’s String Quartet and the latest string quartet by Paweł Mykietyn.