Concert Season Subscription 2022/23 – 42nd concert season/1st concert

Jevgēnijs Čepoveckis, 1st violin
Veronika Brecelj, 2nd violin
May Hamada, 3rd violin
Alberto Stiffoni, 4th violin
Robert Senkiv, 1st viola
Samuel Sedano, 2nd viola
Floris Fortin, 1st cello
Dorottya Standi, 2nd cello

The String Octet Oberton, consists of musicians from Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine. Since its foundation in 2015 they have been performing across Europe and received numerous recognitions from music critics. Their international bibliography of concerts and recordings is simply outstanding, even though they have been working in this, one of the rarest and most demanding chamber music ensembles, for a mere seven years. The eight musicians see the string octet as a constant artistic challenge and encouragement for discovering endless possibilities of string instruments and repertoire diversity, from (a handful) of standard compositions, that were originally created for a string octet, through known covers and rarely performed compositions and novelties or first-time performances. The young musicians share one common goal: they all want to play music at a high level and find unity through music.

For the opening Season Ticket concert, the members of the octet, which includes the violinist Veronika Brecelj from Gorica, have chosen an interesting programme, which they described with the words ‘It all started with Mendelssohn’. Mendelssohn was the first to write a composition for a string octet, and this later inspired other composers. Thus, they will perform his first version of the octet, which differs slightly from the standard version. They will continue with a composition written by Andreas Romberg, who wrote a score for a double quartet already before Mendelssohn, in 1820, and bring the programme to its end with the octet by Mendelssohn’s student Niels Gade, who was greatly influenced by his teacher.

The String Octet Oberton constantly seeks new paths to connect people through the power of music. We believe that they will, regardless of their youth, enthral you with their music, executed at the highest artistic level.

PROGRAMME:

F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: String Octet in E-flat major, op. 20 (first version, 1825)
A. Romberg: Double Quartet in D minor, op. Posthumum
N. Gade: Octet in F major, op. 17