SONART STRING QUARTET, EPIFANIO COMIS

The SonArt String Quartet was founded in 1998 by four musicians with active careers as soloists. Consisting of Nikolai Mintchev, Iva Miletić, Lucian Moraru and Joël Wöpke, the quartet has contributed to the vibrancy of musical life in Romania with appearances at important events such as the Bookfest International Book Fair in Bucharest and the reopening of Romania’s National Museum of Art. The quartet frequently performs at Bucharest’s famous Romanian Athenaeum concert hall. They will appear with the Italian pianist Epifanio Comis, a former student of Agatella Catania, Lazar Berman and Pietro Rattalino, who has as a soloist throughout Europe, Asia, Russia and the USA. He has performed with international orchestras in venues including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Discoteca di Stato (Italy’s national phonographic archive) in Rome, and Osaka Symphony Hall. He has given masterclasses at academies and festivals around the world. Together, quartet and pianist will perform chamber music by two important exponents of the genre. Robert Schumann’s extroverted work (composed in 1842) revolutionised the piano quintet and established it as a quintessentially Romantic genre. In it, he elevated motivic-thematic elements, textural variety and the complexity of the individual parts to the level of symphonic compositions. Almost half a century later, Antonín Dvořák made his own contribution to the chamber repertoire. His second piano quintet, composed in 1887, is characterised by a carefree atmosphere, folk motifs, melodic and rhythmic variety and a balanced formal structure.