Berlin's Notos Quartett makes its West Coast debut at the Vancouver Playhouse
Friends of Chamber Music concert includes William Walton’s Piano Quartet in D minor, a varied piece with an interesting backstory
Notos Quartett.
Friends of Chamber Music presents the Notos Quartett at the Vancouver Playhouse on March 2 at 3 pm
VIOLIST ANDREA BURGER compares the refinement of the Notos Quartett’s sound to the process of polishing a gemstone. Founded in Berlin in 2007 and now a powerful presence on the global music scene, the group has shifted its focus to continually perfecting its output, shining its facets to new brilliance.
What sets the Notos Quartett apart from the crowd is that it’s a piano quartet, somewhat of a rarity in a world where string quartets are the norm. While a string quartet typically consists of two violins, a viola, and a cello, a piano quartet swaps one of those violins for the full-bodied sound of keys.
Over a Zoom call with Stir from her home base in Berlin, Burger shares that the difference changes her role as a violist greatly.
“As string players, you have to be very virtuosic soloists,” Burger says. “But as well, you have to connect as the trio together with the piano. You have to become one. Even though strings and a grand piano are not the same instrument, you have to become one, and that is a very big challenge that many give up on very, very quickly. But we take this as the point to keep going. The four of us together with this combination of instruments, we get to reach much higher. You have so many more possibilities because of the piano. You can be symphonic—you can be very filigran.”
The German word means delicate or intricate, a quality that Burger, violinist Sindri Lederer, and cellist Benjamin Lai balance beautifully with piano player Antonia Köster’s power. Fresh off a concert tour that took them from Cape Town and the island of Mauritius in Africa to Sydney and Adelaide in Australia, the four musicians will make their West Coast debut at the Vancouver Playhouse on March 2 in a Friends of Chamber Music presentation.
Of note on the program for the upcoming show is William Walton’s Piano Quartet in D minor, which the English composer wrote in 1919 at just 16 years old. The work draws plenty of influence from his choral-school upbringing at Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral. But as it turns out, there was a point in time where the piece vanished from Walton’s repertoire altogether due to a little mailing mishap.
“We’re very lucky to play this piece, because he wrote it when he was so young,” Burger says. “He finished it and all. But then he was in Italy, and wanted to send this one score back to his home in England. And of course, it happened as it should at the time, the post lost it. It was lost for several years, and nobody knew where it was—but it turned up again many years later, and he sent it off to a composition competition, and he won with this piece. So this must have meant something for him. He revised it then, and also many years later when he was 74, so in his later years. That means that in this piece, you can hear the very young William Walton, who must have been very ambitious with lots of life, but also the very mature composer.”
The first movement starts out romantic, explains Burger, similar to the style of a Vaughan Williams composition. Then, Walton leans into the rhythmic eccentricity of a Stravinsky score before veering towards a third movement that Burger calls an “absolute jewel” thanks to its Impressionist style, more evocative of Ravel or Debussy. The work finishes with a zippy incorporation of jazz and fiddle influences.
“This piece never gets boring for us,” Burger says. It’s a testament that’s easy to believe given how much sonic variety it encompasses.
Vancouver audiences will also get to hear both Schumann and Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major. Completed in 1786 just after he wrote the famed opera Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart’s groundbreaking composition puts the violin, viola, and cello on an equal pedestal in conversation with the piano. It was a first in the realm of piano quartets; prior to its release, cellists were usually relegated to accompanying pianists, and not much more.
But it’s Schumann’s piano quartet that is truly integral to the Notos Quartett’s history. Not only is it the very first piece that founding members Lederer and Köster played together when they formed the group, it’s also the first work that both Burger and Lai played when they joined.
“It’s something you cannot top basically,” Burger says. “He wrote this when he was just married with Clara Schumann, and that’s why you hear such joy in the piece, I think. It starts completely in absolute bliss, and it’s full of life. And the third movement has to be an ode to Clara as his declaration of love. It has to be, I can’t think otherwise. And the last movement is just a finale like no other. It’s just so much fun to play.”
With such an intimate and exuberant ending to the program, the quartet’s Vancouver debut is sure to showcase every facet of its gem of a sound. 
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