Press Releases

Attaca, the new string quartet after which this album is named, was written for the Aris Quartett by Austrian composer Gerald Resch specifically as a companion piece to Beethoven’s Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59 No.1. The planned world premiere in 2020, ‘Beethoven Year’, would have also been the quartet’s debut at Vienna’s Musikverein which commissioned the work, but it was cancelled due to the pandemic.* Despite this disappointment and the cancellation of
many more debut appearances around the world, the quartet forged ahead with a recording, its fourth album on the GENUIN label, as a tribute to this special programme. The Aris Quartett is one of BBT’s 2020 award winners – many of whom have been thwarted by Coronavirus in the past year – so the Trust was glad for the immediate opportunity to support this initiative.

One of Resch’s central ideas for this, his third string quartet, is the attacca principle, the seamless connection between individual sections and movements as a way of telling a consistent story throughout the whole piece. Beethoven was one of the first to write works that are not just a series of movements, but whose parts combine together to form a larger whole.

Resch says of his music generally, “I want to be clear, succinct, and surprising. Precision, lightness, clarity, complexity, and rapidity – these terms describe my aesthetical point of view very well.”

Caspar Vinzens, violist of the Aris Quartett comments: “It’s a great experience to play something that was written for and dedicated to us and to have met the composer and shared ideas before he started creating the piece. Many elements we appreciate are integrated into it, such as incisive rhythms, gripping energy, and strong communication between the individual voices. With some tricky rhythms and novel playing techniques, it is a technically difficult but delightful
challenge. We are certain the work will also bring a lot of joy to many other quartets in the future.”

* Attacca was performed by the Aris Quartett for the first time on 17 September 2020 at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland

The Aris Quartett also filmed the programme in the recording studio.  Watch an excerpt on Youtube

ARIS QUARTETT
Anna Katharina Wildermuth violin
Noémi Zipperling violin
Caspar Vinzens viola
Lukas Sieber cello
Aris Quartett website

• Founded 2009 in Frankfurt am Main. The players were brought together at a young age as an experiment of chamber music professor Hubert Buchberger at the Frankfurt University of Music
• Awards and prizes include Chamber Music Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation and five prizes at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich as well as a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award 2020. Invited onto the roster of BBC New Generation Artists 2018-21 and the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Stars scheme for 2020-21 season
• Performs on the great stages of the world including Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, London’s Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Konzerthaus Wien, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, BBC Proms and San Francisco Chamber Music Society
• Mentors include Günter Pichler of the Alban Berg Quartet
• Recordings prior to this new release number five highly acclaimed albums, featuring works by Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Hindermith, Reger, Shostakovich, Schubert and Zemlinsky
• Sponsored by the Anna Ruths Foundation, Wilfried and Martha Ensinger Foundation, and Irene Steels-Wilsing Foundation
• ARIS is made up of the four last letters of the four musicians’ first names

GERALD RESCH
Born 1975 in Linz, studied composition from 1993 to 2001 in Vienna, Cologne and Graz with Michael Jarrell, York Höller, Beat Furrer and others, as well as musicology, philosophy and art history at the University of Vienna. He teaches at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna and at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz. He has won a number of prizes and stipends including the Austrian State Stipend for Composition in 2003 and 2017, the Erste Bank Composition Prize in 2011 and the Hamburg Tonali Composition Prize in 2012.
Gerlad Resch website