In addition to music by the Renaissance master Orlando di Lasso, the Lutosławski Quartet will present a late work by Ludwig van Beethoven, preceded by a 20th-century composition by Alfred Schnittke, and at the end will play a contemporary work by Jörg Widmann. This range of eras is no coincidence. All scores share a common denominator: formal boldness and a willingness to push boundaries – often in a provocative, even audacious, way. They challenge listeners. And this is also what makes them so intriguing.

A representative of the Franco-Flemish school, Orlando di Lasso, active in the second half of the 16th century, was mostly active in present-day Germany. He enjoyed international acclaim – his works were printed by all major publishing houses of the time. He was also renowned for his sense of humour, which endeared him to his contemporaries. The Stabat Mater from 1585 is originally an eight-part composition for two choirs. Although it is not the only of the artist’s sonically radical works, researchers have shown that the way in which the motifs were presented was ahead of its time and became common only in the Baroque era.

Alfred Schnittke went down in history as a representative of polystylism. In his work, he freely juggled allusions, quotations, and compositional techniques, often engaging in humorous, not rarely overtly sarcastic, dialogue with the music of bygone eras. “One of my life’s goals was to bridge the gap between serious and light music, even if I had to break my neck in the process,” he wrote. The very beginning of String Quartet No. 3 demonstrates the stylistic range that listeners will encounter. In just a few bars, Schnittke quotes Lasso’s Stabat Mater, Beethoven’s Great Fugue, and the D–S–C–B motif—a musical cryptogram used in Dmitri Shostakovich’s works. The Great Fugue was originally the final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat major op. 130. The publisher asked the composer to write a new finale, fearing that the extremely difficult movement would discourage performers and audiences. Beethoven agreed, and the Great Fugue was published separately as opus 133. For many years, commentators spoke disdainfully of it, comparing it to a musical Tower of Babel and calling it “an indecipherable, error-ridden nightmare”. Only Igor Stravinsky aptly evaluated it a century later, calling it contemporary. It retains an astonishing freshness to this day.

The evening will conclude with the String Quartet No. 6 “Study on Beethoven” by composer and clarinet virtuoso Jörg Widmann, commissioned in 2019 by renowned violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and part of a cycle of works bearing the same subtitle. The author juxtaposes slow movements with dance ones, striving to enhance the contrasts present in Beethoven’s music – as he admits, “in an almost brutal way”.