Sun, Dec. 10, 2023, 11.00 am | Elbphilharmonie, Recital Hall
Alexander Glazunov: String Quintet in A major op. 39
Igor Stravinsky: Concertino for string quartet
Anton Webern: Six Bagatelles for string quartet op. 9
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Octet in E-flat major op. 20 (original version)
Violine: Martin Blomenkamp
Violine: Felix Heckhausen
Violine: Hibiki Oshima
Violine: Gideon Schirmer
Viola: Tomohiro Arita
Viola: Maria Rallo Muguruza
Violoncello: Clara Grünwald
Violoncello: Merlin Schirmer
Martin Blomenkamp studied with Helga Thoene and Rainer Kussmaul in Düsseldorf and Freiburg. Chamber music courses with teachers such as William Pleeth completed his training. He gathered orchestral experience as a member of the German National Youth Orchestra and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie before joining the second violin section of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in 1985.
Felix Heckhausen was born in Bochum. At the age of 16 he became a junior student at the Munich Academy of Music. After his graduation from secondary school, further violin studies took him to Düsseldorf, where Michael Gaiser was his teacher, and to Freiburg, where he studied with Rainer Kussmaul. Master courses with the Amadeus Quartet and Walter Levin and baroque violin courses, among others, rounded out his education. During this time he was an active member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. Since his concert examination in 1995, he has been a member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. An enthusiastic chamber musician, he dedicates his free time to his children and likes to cook. He is also a passionate paraglider.
Hibiki Oshima was born in Yokohama. At the early age of eleven, she had made up her mind to get to know Europe and its culture, and a year later she had the chance to implement this plan on a lengthy journey. These impressions led her to enrol at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts after completing her secondary education. There, her teachers included Rainer Küchl, Johannes Meissl and Avedis Kouyoumdjian. She has performed at numerous music festivals, including Wien Modern, the Pacific Music Festival, the Bienal Musica Hoje and ECMA in Switzerland. She completed her education by taking courses with Gerhard Schulz, Anner Bylsma, Hatto Beyerle and Heime Müller. In 2006/07 Hibiki Oshima was a fellow of the Herbert von Karajan Centre. She won the First Prize at the Chamber Music Competition Pietro Argento as well as the Second Prize and special prize at the Premio Internazionale di Musica “G. Zinetti”. In addition, she received the Eduard Söring Prize of the Foundation for the Support of the Hamburg State Opera in 2011. Her passion for chamber music and contemporary music led her to join ensembles such as the Hibiki Quartet and the Ensemble Platypus, with which she has presented numerous world premieres by young composers. After an engagement as First Concertmaster with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, she has been section leader of the second violins of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since 2010. When she is not playing the violin, she likes to cook and dedicates herself to her secret passion, paragliding.
Gideon Schirmer was born in Stuttgart in 1990. At the age of eight, he began playing the violin, taught by Ulrike Abdank during his school years. He graduated from secondary school one year after winning a First Prize at the federal round of the competition “Jugend musiziert”. He went on to study with Winfried Rademacher and Christoph Schickedanz. He gathered orchestral experience as a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, as a member of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra’s academy and with the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the Staatskapelle Dresden. He became a regular member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra at the beginning of the 2018/19 season. Gideon Schirmer is passionate about water sports; when he is not sailing on the Alster, he might be surfing in other German or far-away coastal waters.
Tomohiro Arita is from Osaka, Japan. He learned to play the violin as a young child and discovered the viola for himself when he was 15 years old. He completed his bachelor studies with Toshihiko Ichitsubo at University of the Arts Tokio, followed by his master studies with Simone von Rahden at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. Already during his studies, he gained orchestral experience with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra as a member of the Orchestra Academy, as well as international festivals, such as the Verbier Festival and the Lucerne Festival. As violist with the Japan National Orchestra, he performs in Japan regularly. Tomohiro Arita has been playing with the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since August 2021.
Maria Rallo Muguruza was born in Hondarribia, Spain, in 1996. She studied viola with Pauline Sachse in Dresden. She gained her first orchestral experiences as a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the academy of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin. She has been a member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra since 2017.
Merlin Schirmer was born in Stuttgart in 1988. His first cello teacher was Erik Borgir, who awakened an interest in contemporary music in his student early on. Merlin Schirmer studied in Stuttgart and Vienna, his teachers including Rudolf Gleißner, Claudio Bohórquez and Valentin Erben, cellist of the former Alban Berg Quartet. Early on, he developed the wish to join a major opera or symphony orchestra. First steps on his path toward this goal were his membership in the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester founded by Claudio Abbado and an internship with the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart. Towards the end of his studies, Merlin Schirmer was first appointed principal cellist of the Jena Philharmonic for a year and then joined the Dresden Philharmonic for another year as a cellist, before becoming a member of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra in August 2015.
Although the form of the string quartet slowly fell out of fashion at the beginning of the 20th century and other, much less well-known and more experimental instrumentations moved into the focus of composers, composers were nevertheless attracted by the challenge of the firmly established instrumental combination. This was the case, among others, with Alexander Glazunov, who quickly had to recognize that the implementation of new musical ideas required not only visionary power, but sometimes also courage and staying power: "Everything in Glazunov is so elegantly done, everything sounds so bright and juicy, all the colors are so rich and strong." With these words, the Russian musicologist Viacheslav Karatygin defended Glazunov against critics who accused him of lacking personality and creative originality. Igor Stravinsky also had to demonstrate staying power in his search for his own original tonal language. In his Concerto for String Quartet, he combines in equal parts the ideas of his musical future with the spirits of the great masters. For Anton Webern, too, chamber music was a refuge of musical experimentation in which he could lay down different ideas as compositional nuclei before continuing to think about them on a larger scale. His Bagatelles for string quartet, for example, all short pieces lasting two minutes, represent a departure from the Romantic sonority in favor of a new, austere tonality. His uncompromising tonal language opened the intellectual space for the musical avant-garde. With the famous octet by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, we move from modernism to the summery Berlin of the year 1825, to an address that is probably familiar to Berliners: Leipziger Strasse 3. There, where today the German Bundesrat tag, the banking family Mendelssohn had their estate in the 19th century. It was here that Alexander von Humboldt, Hegel, Schleiermacher and E.T.A. Hoffman came and went, where the art-loving public gathered on Sunday mornings and sought relaxation with intellectual enjoyment. The octet is one of these works, which should caress the mind and soul in equal measure. It is not only one of the great masterpieces of chamber music, but also an intellectual and music-historical document of the first rank for the Berlin of idealism.
Venue: Elbphilharmonie, Recital Hall, Platz der Deutschen Einheit 4, 20457 Hamburg
