Summer of festivals
Like a virtual postcard after summer vacation, here’s a retrospective of the past few months we spent festival-hopping.
Festival Un Temps pour Elles
Our summer season started with a special performance in Taverny, as part of a festival whose programming is 100% dedicated to the music of female composers. We shared the stage with singer Armelle Marcq in an eclectic program, “Memories”, that introduced the audience to some gems of the 19th and 20th century repertoire - and was a chance Fiona to reunite with her gong in Soo Yeon Lyuh’s piece Yessori (Sound from the Past). Thank you Héloïse Luzzati for the invitation and for doing this important programming and advocacy work for women composers!
We were touched to receive two enthusiastic reviews of the performance.
“The performers of this young quartet are excellent. Remarkable in their balance, flexibility and spontaneity, the ensemble knows how to subtly vary their atmospheres, formulate a perfectly crafted phrase, and take or share the spotlight in service of an understated but meaningful musical narration, their intense concentration slipping into smiles of complicity: you should follow the path of these musicians closely!”
Anne Ibos-Augé, for Diapason (transl.)“Invigorating, the Quatuor Magenta shines with all the colours of the rainbow in their evident enthusiasm. These young artists are a great discovery. The audience left with the desire to hear not only the pieces again but also the quartet, to rediscover the emotion and palpable energy that united the musicians.”
Hugues Rameau-Clays for classique-c-cool (transl.)
Festival de Radio France Occitanie Montpellier
In July we headed south to the Radio France Festival. On the program, four concerts with unbelievably kind and enthusiastic audiences in Montpellier’s Salle Corum and in churches in neighbouring towns. It was our chance to revisit Yves Balmer’s piece “Fragments soulevés par le vent” that we had performed in Paris the previous month, and to say goodbye for now to Janacek’s “Intimate Letters”, which has accompanied us throughout our 2023/24 season.
Festival des Arcs
15 days in residence and no fewer than ten concerts: that’s the wild adventure of being quartet in residence at the Festival des Arcs!
This year’s edition of the festival welcomed Raphaël Merlin as composer in residence, and we had the enormous pleasure of performing his sextet Night Bridge, alongside Raphaël himself and violist Ludovic Levionnois. Composed as a bridge between Dutilleux’s quartet Ainsi la Nuit and Schoenberg’s sextet Transfigured Night and featuring all the nocturnal jazz standards you can possibly imagine (Moon River! Stella by Starlight!) this is a piece we hope to revisit soon!
Alongside our quartet concerts, we also had the chance to share the stage with brilliant clarinetist Philippe Berrod in Brahms’s celebrated clarinet quintet.
