About

The Vilnius String Quartet (VSQ)’s concert series Open the Gate of Oblivion has featured all of Beethoven’s late quartets. The finishing chord of this series is his Die Große Fuge (Great Fugue) in B flat major, Op. 133, written in 1825 as the finale of String quartet No. 13. The fugue was condemned by the critics of the time, described as “incomprehensible as Chinese”, “a confusion of the Tower of Babel”, “eccentric” and the like. Thus, Beethoven was asked by his publisher to compose a new finale to String quartet No. 13, Op 130, and the Great Fugue, Op. 133 was published as a stand-alone work. Opinions changed over time, and since the beginning of the 20th century, the Great Fugue has been considered one of Beethoven’s greatest achievements, described by Igor Stravinsky as “an absolutely modern piece of music that will be modern forever”, and by the American musicologist Joseph Kerman as “one of the most difficult scores not only of Beethoven, but also of the whole of musical literature”.

Kharkiv-born Victor Rekalo, whose String quartet Dormin (2023) will be performed in this concert, is already well known as a cellist of the VSQ, laureate of many competitions. He made his debut as a composer in Lviv in 2022 with his suite Seven Simple Dawns for solo cello. Rekalo mainly composes ballets and music for dance performances, which have been staged in Kyiv, Cologne, London and elsewhere. “They are asleep. They have the feeling that they will never wake up. And when the ‘never’ ends, there will be no more war, no more broken hearts, no more black notes. They dream of never never waking up again”, he describes the String quartet Dormin.

“While we were on tour in Rome, the composer Tomas Juzeliūnas called and offered to play his string quartet Šiaurės pašvaistė (Northern Lights). Soon after, we received the sheet music for this piece and it immediately resonated with us,” says Dalia Kuznecovaitė, the VSQ’s first violin. Unlike his father, Julius Juzeliūnas, a master of large-scale forms, Tomas Juzeliūnas writes mostly chamber works. The composer, who celebrates his 60th birthday this year, has been using the Greek term “eilikríneia” (ειλικρίνεια) as a motto for his work for several years now – it means sincerity, which is something that is sorely lacking in today’s man. “I have not seen the Northern Lights in person, but I understand that it is very impressive. It is the beauty of nature that I am talking about in my composition,” says T. Juzeliūnas.