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Archive: Masterpieces
Krems Klangraum Krems Minoritenkirche Klangraum Krems Minoritenkirche
“Imago Deae” Chamber Music
Maria Bach: Piano Quintet in A minor “Volga Quintet” (1927/28)
Grażyna Bacewicz: Piano Quintet No. 1 (1952)
Two female composers, Maria Bach (1896–1978) and Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969), are at the heart of this chamber music discovery. There will be a reunion with the Messages Quartet – known from their successful contribution to the Imago Dei Festival 2022. The four musicians perform as the festival ensemble this year, along with acclaimed pianist Julia Kociuban.
The composer Maria Bach was born in Vienna, grew up in Baden, and was also an accomplished painter. Her Piano Quintet with variations on the “Volga boatmen’s song”, composed in 1927/28, was only rediscovered just a few years ago in a library. Since then, it has delighted musicians and audiences alike with its late romantic sensuality.
While Maria Bach was all but forgotten in Austria, Grażyna Bacewicz remained popular in her native Poland. Already during her lifetime, she enjoyed a high status in Polish musical life and had a firm place in the concert repertoire as a pianist, violinist, and composer. Bacewicz’s Piano Quintet No. 1, written in 1952, is music that can flare up in a blink of an eye wink while accumulating density and tension in the next moment, like a focused laser beam, effortlessly cutting through all layers of the surface to reach down into the depths.
In cooperation with the Köchel Gesellschaft Krems and the Polish Institute Vienna.
