The “Schumann” String Quartet will hold a full-evening concert at the “Ohrid Summer” festival tonight at the Church of St. Sophia, starting at 9:00 PM. The program includes string quartets by composers L. V. Beethoven, L. Janacek, and F. Mendelssohn.
The trio of brothers Mark, Eric, and Ken Schumann has been making music together since their early childhood, and along with violist Faït Hertenstein, they compose the “Schumann” String Quartet. These four musicians have an incredible power to communicate without words. Although their individual qualities are always evident, in their collective performance, they become a “unity” that blends into a kind of spiritual metamorphosis. Their openness to new musical explorations and exceptional performance curiosity is probably owed to the people from whom they learned, such as Eberhart Felts and the “Alban Berg” Quartet, as well as those with whom they collaborated, like Menahem Pressler.
In their artistic development, the “Schumann” Quartet has likely reached the phase where everything is possible, and they would say that the true development of a musical work happens only during live performances. To bring additional energy to their concerts and to confirm this belief, they perform with exceptional artists as partners on stage. Some of these partners include Sharon Kam, Fabian Müller, Ana Lucia Richter, Anna Vinnitskaya, and Jörg Widmann.
In the current season, the “Schumann” Quartet embarked on a concert tour in Singapore and Adelaide, Australia. They performed twice at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and even thrice at Wigmore Hall in London. In April of this year, they went on a European tour (Brussels, Hamburg, Berlin, Geneva, etc.) during which they collaborated with pianist Anna Vinnitskaya in performing Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet.