Composed in 1890, Chrysanthemums is one of Puccini’s few purely instrumental works; this well-known piece was inspired by the sudden death of the son of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy. The mood of Lutosławski’s String Quartet, premiered in 1965, is also reminiscent of funeral music. Throughout nearly the entire quartet, the Polish composer employed aleatoric composition, a method based on chance: in these sections, the parts move freely relative to one another, without synchronization, creating an exceptionally unique soundscape. Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, is, like the composer’s other late quartets, a monumental and groundbreaking work. The slow movement is situated in the middle of the five-movement form; Beethoven gave it the following title: Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity from a Convalescent, in the Lydian Mode. The prayerful, chorale-like sections are followed by livelier passages with a triple meter, which represent the patient’s steadily increasing vitality.

The members of the Korossy Quartet began working together in 2018. The following year, they won the Leó Weiner National Chamber Music Competition, organized by the Liszt Academy of Music Budapest, and in 2021, the ensemble was awarded five special prizes at the International Bartók Competition. Their work is supported by renowned artists, including Eberhard Feltz, Barnabás Kelemen, András Keller, Katalin Kokas, György Pauk, Günter Pichler, András Schiff, and Gábor Takács-Nagy. In addition to performing at Hungary’s largest concert venues, they have participated in international festivals such as the Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest, Kamara.hu, Arcus Temporum, Bartók Spring, Festival Academy Budapest, and the Mahler Festival in Toblach. The BMC audience may also be already familiar with the quartet: in the fall of 2023, they launched a series to perform all of Béla Bartók’s string quartets at the Concert Hall, while during the 2025/26 season, they played Kurtág’s works at the Kurtág100 festival, and later gave a joint concert with Zoltán Fejérvári. In the 2026/27 season, they are launching a new series titled Refractions, which, over the course of three concerts, will shed light on various facets of the genre through pieces rarely associated with each other.

Further concerts in this series:

2026.09.25. Korossy Quartet: Refractions 3/1.
2027.05.21. Korossy Quartet: Refractions 3/3.