For 20 years, the Quatuor ANCHES HANTEES has explored the work of Johann Strauss through numerous transcriptions that regularly punctuate its programs. But our musicians aren’t the only ones to admire the composer: Brahms, Wagner, and Richard Strauss also had a fascination for this immense melodist.
The QAH offers us a program evoking Strauss’s influence in all its facets.
How does it shine through the repertoire? How, through music (or perhaps dance), did the waltz and the polka, originally popular, spread to all the courts of Europe and beyond, propelling Strauss to superstardom? How do the shifts occur from the street (popular/traditional/urban) to the concert hall (the scholarly)? The QAH is working with its arrangers to unearth and transcribe gems from a repertoire marked by the Strauss dynasty. The young composer Charles-David Wajnberg joins them for a creation that will raise the question of influences and serve as a common thread throughout the program. Contrasting with Strauss’s rich melodic writing, it will allow each of the aesthetics to be brought to light.