On Sunday 17th November, in the Sala Bianca, there will be a new performance of the Chamber Music series, at 11:00 am, the second of seven events, which will lead up to Sunday 19th April 2020; the concert is, and always will be preceded by a tea tasting, offered by Peter's Tea House Como, in harmony with the musical programme; the partnership between the Teatro Sociale in Como / AsLiCo and the prestigious tea company is strengthened, to offer the public an ever new experience, a union between music, the chamber repertoire, the pleasure of tasting tea, the fragrance of infusions.

Harmony and Symmetries
Music by Antonín Dvorák and Leoš Janácek
with the Echos Quartet

Antonín Dvorák, String Quartet in F major "American", Op.96 No.12
Leoš Janácek, String Quartet " Intimate Letters ", VII / 13 No. 2

Echos Quartet
Andrea Maffolini and Ida Di Vita, Violins
Chiara Lodovisi, Viola
Martino Maina, Cello

The second event of the series will be presenting the Echos Quartet with a programme that includes two composers, very different from each other but both of them represent the late Czech Romanticism movement and then that of the unstoppable propulsion, typical of the twentieth-century experimentation, which affected the neighbouring Central Europe.

On this occasion, the String Quartet in F major 'American', Op. 96 No. 12 By Antonín Dvorák (1841 - 1904) composed in 1893 will be played. The opera was created when the composer was teaching at the New York Conservatory, invited by the patron Jeannette Thurber, who founded the institution in 1885, and who had persuaded Dvorák's wife, Anna, thanks to an economic proposal which amounted to 25 times their average annual salary (about $ 15,000), taking into account that at the beginning of his career, as a simple organist Dvorák used to earn just $ 80 a year.
The economic factor convinced the couple, initially very reluctant to cross the ocean, to settle down in New York from 1892 to 1895.
The piece of work, which was composed while he was working as a professor in the USA – is divided into four movements, ma non troppo; Lento; Molto vivace; Finale; for this reason, the piece has been called “American”.
This piece recalls his native land as well as Bohemian popular melodic sounds, which are not the result of real philological and historical researches (typical instead of Janácek’s), but simple and vague suggestions, with clear references to American folklore, similar to those that then characterised the famous New World Symphony, dating back to December of the same year (1893).

Leoš Janácek (1854 -1928), more rigorous in investigating Bohemian folk music, genuine and indigenous, in line with scientific research practiced by many contemporary composers (for example Béla Bartók in Hungary or Heitor Villa-Lobos in Brazil), in February 1928 (he died on 12th August of the same year), he composed the String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate letters” (Listy duverne), VII / 13, having already metabolised what was written by Stravinsky and the Second Vienna School (Berg in particular).
Not so extreme in its atonality, it nevertheless reveals, by now seventy-two years old, a great awareness and strong accents in the timbral choices, destined to describe four autobiographical moments, linked to four 'sentimental occasions', in the succession of the four movements in which the composition is divided: the first, Andante. Con moto. Allegro. Adagio describes the meeting with Kamila Stösslová (1891 - 1935), 37 years younger than him; the Adagio (B-flat minor). Vivace evokes a vacation in Luhakovice in Moravia; the third Moderato movement. Andante. Adagio represents the sweetened and pathos image with which Janácek observed the girl; finally, the Allegro. Andante. Adagio shyness to reveal love towards her.