Sun, 06.09.2026
From my life

Since Beethoven at the latest, the symphony has been considered the grand, public genre. The string quartet, something like its little sister, offers a considerably more intimate setting. It was therefore only logical that Bedřich Smetana chose this small-scale chamber music genre for his musical, autobiographical retrospective "From My Life." In it, he not only set to music the joyful life of his youth and the happiness of his first love, but also the "moment of sudden interruption by the ominous catastrophe: the onset of deafness."

Already foreshadowed in the first movement, the "whistling in the highest notes" manifests itself in the finale in a sustained, high note four octaves above middle C. It was also a personal experience that inspired the American composer Caroline Shaw to write "Entr'acte" for string quartet: namely, her encounter with Haydn's last complete string quartet, Op. 77/2, or more precisely, the transition into the trio of the minuet at a concert by the Brentano Quartet. Shaw found this so moving that she conceived a work consisting of numerous such "whimsical, subtle, colorful transitions."

Haydn's string quartets were also of central importance to Beethoven. This is evident, not least, in the Scherzo of the sixth string quartet of his Opus 18, which is full of rhythmic and motivic ambiguities. The final movement, which Beethoven titled "La malinconia," seems, by contrast, deeply personal, although it remains controversial whether this melancholy is actually autobiographical and connected to the composer's onset of deafness.

Program:
Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat major, Op. 18;
Bedřich Smetana - String Quartet No. 1 in E minor "From My Life";
Caroline Shaw - Entr'acte for Strings

. Performers:
Winterthur String Quartet;
Bogdan Božović - Violin;
Francesco Sica - Violin
; Jürg Dähler - Viola;
Flurin Cuonz - Cello.

Concert without intermission.

Ticket office (Mon–Fri, 9:30–13:30):
Stadthaus Winterthur, Stadthausstrasse 4a, CH-8400 Winterthur, Tel. +41 52 620 20 20, konzertkarten@musikkollegium.ch

Other ticket outlets
- Winterthur Tourism, Main Train Station, CH-8400 Winterthur
- Ticket Corner, all Swiss ticket outlets