Journey into the Inside   Cedag Quartett

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War – on 8 May 1945. In collaboration with musik+, the Cedag Quartet is taking this as an opportunity for an evening of remembrance. In memory of the many artists who did not survive the horrors of the Nazi period, the programme features two pioneering composers: Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered in Auschwitz, with his String Quartet No. 3 and Erwin Schulhoff, who was interned and died in the Wülzburg Castle prison camp for non-German civilians, with his String Quartet No. 1. In Different Trains Steve Reich reflects on this period and on his childhood and train journeys between New York and Los Angeles to visit his parents, who had separated: What was going on at that time? Well, that was 1939, 1940, 1941, and what was going on at the time was little Jewish boys like me were put on trains from Rotterdam or Brussels or Budapest to Poland and they never came back.

Dmitri Shostakovich took refuge in inner emigration and sought to offer resistance through his compositions. The programme includes his String Quartet No. 11 op. 122.

Cedag Quartett
Martin Yavryan, Clemens Gahl – violin
Ernst Theuerkauf – viola
Peter Polzer – cello