Friday 4.8

11.11 a.m. – St. Johannis Church Hitzacker (Elbe), admission free
Eleven Past Eleven: Mozart for All! Festival Choir and Ensembles
Alexander Lüken – Conductor

Our daily choir session which bonds Festival guests and local enthusiasts traditionally ends with a joyful little concert in the St. Johannis Church. Instrumentalists from the Festival region have been rehearsing and join the choir. Something for the Mozart motto, some a cappella fun, maybe a madrigal by the Festival's special vocal ensemble – our enormously popular Festival choir director Alexander Lüken (at home in Cologne) surely has good things in store for the audience!
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02.02 p.m. – VERDO Concert Hall
Mark Andre – Composition
Kuss Quartet – String Quartet
Ariane Jeßulat – Moderation
Tickets online

Two Past Two | Audience-Academy IV: Composer Mark Andre (including a performance of his Sieben Stücke für Streichquartett)

Last year, the composer could only attend the Academy via live stream from Paris, Kim Kashkashian concentrated on Brahms instead and there was nonetheless plenty of discussion about Mark Andre's work – that's how the Audience Academy and the world premiere of the famous composer's miniature for string quartet went in 2022. In the meantime, the work, commissioned by the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival and teetering as it does on the whispering edge of silence, has grown to encompass seven movements, all of which are technically an enormous challenge to the Kuss Quartet. In conversation with Professor Ariane Jessulat from the Berlin University of the Arts, the composer will share insights into his work with the interested Academy audience.
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07.07 p.m. – VERDO Gardens, admission free
Seven Past Seven: Pre-Concert Young Talents (Young Academy Rostock, Institute for the Early Promotion of Musically Gifted Youngsters at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media)
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08.08 p.m. – VERDO Concert Hall
Kuss Quartet – String Quartet
Tomoko Akasaka – Viola
Tickets online

Eight Past Eight: Mozart's String Quintets I

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): Streichquintett Quintett B-Dur für zwei Violinen, zwei Violen und Violoncello KV 174
Mark Andre (*1964): Sieben Stücke für Streichquartett (2022)

– Interval –

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Streichquintett Es-Dur für zwei Violinen, zwei Violen und Violoncello KV 614

The Japanese violist Tomoko Akasaka, assistant to the legendary violist Noboko Imai in Geneva and herself a professor in Münster, is the ideal partner for the Kuss Quartet's Mozart string quintet project. They perform two of these works, considered by experts to be the most noble and perfect of the chamber music works by the Viennese composer. In contrast, the Kuss Quartet performs the Summer Music Festival's commissioned work by Mark Andre, the first section of which caused something of an audience uproar at last year's premiere, due to its nearly silent dynamics and its unusual technical demands on the performers.