Slavic Folk Dances Transformed

With her residency, Julia Fischer places all kinds of chamber music right into the spotlight – an exciting challenge and, at the same time, a wonderful opportunity to explore the stylistic richness of this unique form of musical expression. The String Quartet No. 1 by Smetana, titled “From My Life”, is also about storytelling—and there’s a good reason for it! Battling with deafness, Smetana, through his composition, creates a kind of confession where, in the composer’s own words, “the four instruments converse with each other like in a circle of friends”. For the second piece of the evening, Julia Fischer, showcasing her limitless talent, swaps her violin bow for the keys as she, alongside her friends, performs one of the most enchanting piano quintets of the entire repertoire: Dvořák’s Second. The work reflects the composer’s profound maturity, featuring characteristic moments of Central European folk music – the rhythmic patterns of the Ukrainian Dumka in the second movement, the Furiant (a Czech folk dance) in the third movement, and the joyfully emerging Polka in the finale.