Quatuor Voce

An ethereal, ghostly silhouette, the Houses of Parliament rise up like an apparition. The stone architecture appears to have lost all substance. Sky and water are painted with the same color palette, dominated by mauve and orange, applied to the canvas in fragmented brushstrokes in order to convey the dense atmosphere and thick fog. These impalpable elements make the building melt away, reducing it to an ephemeral figure in the gloom. Mendelssohn was a seasoned traveler, and found inspiration during his numerous trips to England. The flamboyant colors in the mist of Claude Monet's painting recall the atmosphere of Op. 80, a piece full of the vibrant passion of youth but not without a touch of melancholy. Ravel's String Quartet, composed in 1903, a year before the painting, merges classical structure with explorations of timbre, color, and harmony, giving its lines a hazy, shimmering quality.

The shape-changing adventurers of Quatuor Voce have been cultivating their talents for twenty years. They have won many international competitions, and travel the world over, from Helsinki to Cairo and Tokyo to Bogota. While committed to the great works of classical repertoire, they also boldly explore many different types of performance, setting masterpieces of silent film to music and sharing a stage with a diverse range of artists: eclectic cellist Vincent Segal, singers Kyrie Kristmanson and Aynur, choreographer Thomas Lebrun, the Christian & François Ben Aïm Company, and more recently the Griot artists of the Da Kali trio.

Artists

• Quatuor Voce
  • Cécile Roubin, violin;
  • Sarah Dayan, violin;
  • Guillaume Becker, viola;
  • Arthur Heuel, cello.

Program

• Felix Mendelssohn
  • String Quartet in F minor, op. 80 no. 6;
• Maurice Ravel
  • String Quartet in F major, O 35.