Vroege strijkkwartetten door ensemble Les Récréations

Early string quartets

'Does a perfect musical form exist? Something like a circle?' Writer Rob Schouten is quite certain: 'I believe that the string quartet is a kind of musical circle.' Many composers agree: the string quartet is often seen as the ultimate form of chamber music. The intimate and intellectual counterpart to the symphony, with all its bombast. The string quartet owes this stature to Haydn, who paved the way, Mozart, who perfected the string quartet, and Beethoven, who subsequently thoroughly renewed it. But before the string quartet became a string quartet, four-part bowing was already in full swing, as the ensemble Les Récréations demonstrates this morning.

The Recreations

The French ensemble Les Récréations focuses on two centuries of bowed four-part music, prior to the establishment of the string quartet genre. Their repertoire of two hundred years of music and innovations encompasses music from Palestrina to Mozart, from the consort tradition to the beginnings of the Viennese Classics. In this concert, they demonstrate how the Italian Baroque culminates in what we now know as the string quartet: with music by Alessandro Scarlatti, Tartini, Sammartini, and Boccherini, they work towards Mozart's Third String Quartet .