Horizon funèbre

Horizon funèbre
A full century intervened between the deaths of Franz Schubert (1828) and Leoš Janácek (1928): it was during this time that Romanticism reached its apogee and then declined, coming to an end at the rise of the Second Viennese School. The two works recorded here have many striking similarities, despite having been composed more than a century apart: both works are programmatic in character and have a direct link with literary works in which death is omnipresent. The inspiration that both composers drew from these texts makes the imaginative and narrative power of the music highly tangible. Both works provide a direct expression of the extreme emotions that death summons up: grief, pain, despair and madness.

Taurus Quartet
Four talented Belgian musicians came together to expand their music-making with the greatest works of the chamber music repertoire in 2012. From their fi rst season onwards, the Taurus Quartet had the privilege and the pleasure to make their debut in splendid concert halls and with renowned festivals, these including the Festival Musiq3, Flagey, Festival de Wallonie, Festival de Stavelot, Festival “Voces Intimae”, Concertgebouw Bruges, the Festival of Flanders, Bozar, Festival de Saintes, Festival “Voces Intimae”, Handelsbeurs Ghent, Novecento, De Singel Antwerp, the Middagconcerten in Brussels, concerts in Liège, Louvain, and De Toonzaal in ‘s Hertogenbosch, as well as the Noorderkerk in Amsterdam. The Taurus Quartet is supported by De Singel (Antwerpen) and was coached during its fi rst years by Antje Weithaas, Johannes Meissl en Peter Schuhmayer. Many of the quartet’s concerts are recorded live for later broadcast throughout Europe by radio (Musiq3, Klara, Radio France) and television (RTBF). The Taurus Quartet is pleased to present Horizon funèbre, its fi rst CD project; it comprises two CDs containing works by Janácek and Schubert that have death as their central theme. These works are the last string quartets by both composers, Schubert’s String Quartet nr. 15 and Janácek’s String Quartet nr. 2, “Intimate Letters”: two musical testaments, composed shortly before the deaths of both composers. The two works on the second CD are programmatic in character and portray the cruelty of death — Death in an active role: they are Schubert’s String Quartet nr. 14 Der Tod und das Mädchen and Janácek’s String Quartet nr. 1, The Kreutzer Sonata. The cover photographs of the two CDs, when combined, form a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s Cornfi eld with crows, the original Horizon funèbre.