Postcard from Germany: Heidelberg String Quartet Festival

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The historic Old Town of Heidelberg, cosily laid out below the city castle, is a well-frequented haunt for both locals and tourists, its numerous shops, cafés and taverns constantly alive with patrons, students from the city’s university (founded in 1386 and the oldest in Germany) prominent among them. But only a few tram stops away, on the other side of the river Neckar, there lies the residential district of Neuenheim, its streets lined with luxurious villas from the Gründerzeit (Age of the Founders; that period following the inception of the German Empire in 1871 when many of the companies – such as Daimler and Benz – that contributed to Germany’s economic rise were founded). One of them, built in 1907 in German Renaissance style, is home to the Old College of Education.

During four days each January, it hosts the Streichquartettfest, an autonomous mini-festival within the larger Heidelberger Frühling (Heidelberg Spring Festival).

Thorsten Schmidt, the event’s artistic director since its beginnings, explains that it all started in 2005 with a two-day workshop that proved so successful that a larger frame was chosen for the string quartet festival the following year. Since then, the pattern has remained the same: eight concerts and workshops spread from Thursday evening to Sunday morning, the Saturday including a so-called Long Night during which the ensembles are given carte blanche to present their favourite pieces, independently from any emphasis the string quartet festival may have in that particular year. For the festival’s 20th edition in 2025 (23–26 January), Schmidt showcased a German composer who is himself celebrating a special birthday: Helmut Lachenmann, who turns 90 in November. He was also given a say in the programming, choosing Bartók and Beethoven as his fellow featured composers.

In conversation with Oliver Wille (Kuss Quartet violinist and a regular workshop presenter at the festival), Lachenmann explained his aesthetic principles in a charming, down-to-earth manner. He is well aware that his music may not be for the proverbial ‘man in the street’ and that many people don’t even consider it to be music at all. ‘These are the ones I want to reach, not the ones who merely find me “interesting”!’ He recalled being awarded a fellowship of the Royal College of Music, London, where he had a conversation with the then Prince Charles, who was president of the college and is now its patron. When the prince said that he found his music ‘difficult to understand’, the composer replied, paraphrasing Shakespeare, that there is method in his madness!

Lachenmann has so far written three string quartets, which he sees as so many stations in a continuing involvement with the genre. ‘Just as Morton Feldman wrote The Viola in My Life, these pieces are my own “The String Quartet in My Life”,’ he said. Lucas Fels – cellist with the Arditti Quartet, which premiered Lachenmann’s string quartets nos.2 (Reigen seliger Geister) and 3 (Grido) in 1989 and 2001 respectively – led a workshop on the special techniques asked for in the music. The scores include detailed instructions on how to bring forth the sounds imagined by the composer, many of which are undreamt of in the philosophy of most string players – or luthiers. With mock ruefulness, the composer recalled players ostentatiously showing up with a cheap factory instrument for a performance of a piece that requires them to tap, knock on or variously hit it; I wonder if he realised that one of the players taking part in this workshop had done just that! In String Quartet no.1 (Gran Torso, written in 1971), the first violin is namely asked to grind the bow’s hair noisily against the instrument’s back to rather painful-sounding effect.

Listening to the Lachenmann string quartet oeuvre over two days in engaged performances by the Diotima and Kuss quartets was a unique experience – one learnt to listen for the subtlest nuances of dynamic and tone production – but also an extremely demanding one. It says a lot for the audience members that they not only stood the course, but also asked excellent questions during the workshop.

The festival’s audience is a loyal one; Schmidt knows personally many who have been attending since that very first year. While most are indeed ‘of a certain age’ and, regrettably, music students are seldom to be seen, he isn’t too worried: ‘We do get new listeners, though they may be in their forties and not their twenties. Some now bring their children!’ And they are knowledgeable too – the tradition of amateur music making being alive and well in Germany. A first-time workshop presenter once asked, rather condescendingly, if anyone present had ever played a string quartet. He was rather taken aback when two thirds of the audience raised their hands!

The festival makes a point of featuring both well-established ensembles and (relative) newcomers. Alongside the Diotima and Kuss quartets, this season included the Frankfurt-based Fabrik Quartet, the Hana Quartet from Munich and the Swedish–Norwegian group Opus13. Focusing on new music, the Fabrik (founded in 2022) shone in Xenakis’s Tetras (1983), a study in glissandos and microtones, while evincing considerable choreographic ability in Mark Applebaum’s Darmstadt Kindergarten (2015).

The sounds imagined by Lachenmann are undreamt of in the philosophy of most string players – or luthiers

The name of the Hana Quartet (founded in 2019) reflects its violinists’ Japanese and Korean roots (hana meaning ‘flower’ in the former language and ‘one’, or ‘unity’, in the latter). The two take turns leading, each bringing a distinctive personality to the equation. With Fuga Miwatashi in the first chair, the group was alert to Haydn’s harmonic legerdemains in op.33 no.1, presented with a nod towards period practice and a good show of sheer virtuosity in the finale, while Gyurim Kwak led a passionate reading of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in F minor. The group was at its most movingly engaging in Soo Yeon Lyuh’s Yessori (Sound from the Past); written in 2016 for the Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future project, a piece that references the sounds of the haegeum (Korean two-string fiddle).

Normally completely Scandinavian, Opus13 (founded in 2014) was on this occasion one quarter British, as its violist was indisposed and had to be replaced by Welshman Edgar Francis. The foursome were perfectly attuned to each other in beautifully transparent readings of their signature piece, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A minor, and of Grieg, where they included some appropriate suggestions of Hardanger fiddling. Performing on the soft-spoken 1736 ‘Spencer Dyke’ Stradivari, leader Sonoko Miriam Welde touched the heart with her every phrase, nowhere more so than in the long unaccompanied passage towards the end of the Mendelssohn.

Of the four Bartók quartets on the bill of fare, my favourite was no.6 as performed by the Kuss Quartet, with a beautiful opening from violist William Coleman and some almost uncanny understanding between Wille and leader Jana Kuss. Some quick notes on Beethoven: the Diotima Quartet made much of the thigh-slapping humour in the scherzo of op.127, while underlining its slow movement’s vicinity to that of Schubert’s Quintet. The seven movements of op.131 were welded into a monumental unity by the Kuss Quartet. In the Hana Quartet’s hands, the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ of op.132 was a heartfelt prayer. It fell to Opus13 to conclude the festival with a classically shaped op.130, but not before they and the Hana had joined forces with the Kuss for an overwhelming reading of the Grosse Fuge at the late-night event. Small wonder that the habitués keep returning to Heidelberg year after year.

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