BERLIN STAATSKAPELLE STRING QUARTET & SARAH ARISTIDOU
OPHELIA SONGS
- Faculty
Artists
Sarah Aristidou
Soprano
Program
Joseph Haydn
String Quartet in C major Hob. III:77 "Emperor"
Johannes Brahms
Five Ophelia Songs WoO 22
Arrangement for Soprano and String Quartet by Aribert Reimann
Brett Dean
String Quartet No. 2 with Soprano "And once I played Ophelia"
Bedrich Smetana
String Quartet No. 1 in E minor "From My Life"
The mysterious character of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is at the center of the program presented by the Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet and soprano Sarah Aristidou: Aribert Reimann’s adaptation of Brahms’s Ophelia Songs is juxtaposed with the Second String Quartet “And once I played Ophelia” by Australian composer Brett Dean, written in 2013 as a study for his opera Hamlet. Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet and Smetana’s autobiographical From My Life bookend the program.