About

The unusual instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass, and the inclusion of the famous song Die Forelle (The Trout) were the only requests of Sylvester Paumgartner, the commissioner of Forellenquintett, for Franz Schubert. The two met in the summer of 1819, when the composer and his friends were visiting the summer house of this wealthy music lover in Steyr, Austria.

The work, which captures the sunny atmosphere of summer, was forgotten for some time and was not published until after the composer’s death. However, today it is considered one of the most important masterpieces of chamber music. The Farewell to the Old Year with Forellenquintett has long been a beautiful tradition of the Vilnius String Quartet and its friends.

Ukrainian composer Dmitri Klebanov wrote his String quartet No. 4 during the period of Stalinist repression. Enriched with Ukrainian folklore, the work reveals the distinctive style of a composer who defied the dictates of the regime. Short but powerful (as music critics describe this string quartet), it is the composer’s dedication to another Ukrainian composer, Mykola Leontovych, who died at the hands of the Soviet secret police. Leontovych’s well-known Christmas melody Carol of the Bells (Ukrainian Shchedryk) can be heard at the beginning of Klebanov’s String quartet.