Concert V
PuraCorda - Mendelssohn & Mendelssohn
July 1st 2022 - 20:30
Palma: Archive of the Regne of Majorca
PuraCorda (original instruments)
Mayumi Sargent & Panagiotis Charalampidis (violins)
Eura Fortuny (viola)
Antigoni Seferli (cello)
Program:
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel - String Quartet in E flat major
Felix Mendelssohn - String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 “Requiem for Fanny”
Mendelssohn & Mendelssohn is a tribute to Fanny Mendelssohn and the beautiful relationship between the two talented brothers.
Fanny Mendelssohn is one of the many female composers who have not been recognized as such due to the fact that she was a woman and because of the social expectations of this genre in her time. Unfortunately, his curse has still haunted him centuries later: even now it is underestimated and overlooked. His abilities as a pianist received some of the highest praise for his time: "he plays like a man." However, she was repeatedly told that music could and should only be a complement to her, as was customary. He composed more than 450 works, of which very few were published during his lifetime. Her brother published some clothes under his own name so that Fanny's compositions could see the light. The bond between the two brothers was undeniably strong. Félix privately admired his sister's compositional skills and worked on his pieces based solely on the suggestions she gave him. She lovingly called him Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom.
Fanny wrote only one string quartet in 1834, the String Quartet in E flat Major; currently known as one of the first string quartets written by a woman of which we still have the manuscript today. Based on an unfinished piano sonata that he had begun writing five years earlier, this piece is a majestic composition full of deep emotion, with significant insight and influence from L. Beethoven. Until and everything we could say that beautifully represents his conflicting impulses and internal struggles between the life that he could have had and the social expectations that he carried on his shoulders.
The composer's sudden death in 1847 was a devastating blow to Felix. The composer wrote the last string quartet in memory of his sister and called it Requiem for Fanny. Full of agony, rage and pain (also in Scherzo, not usual), this particular string quartet will become his last finished composition. Two months later he follows in his sister's footsteps, also ending up in the grave.
PuraCorda was born at the beginning of 2020 from the initiative of the Majorcan violinist Mayumi Sargent and the Greek cellist Antigoni Seferli, after having met during their musical studies specializing in historicist performance at the Amsterdam Conservatory. From the love and dedication to the gut strings and all they have to offer came the idea of PuraCorda: a string quartet dedicated to the historicist interpretation of 19th and 20th century repertoire, new and exciting territory that very few ensembles have explored. with gut strings. Based in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the members are all Mediterranean; half from the Balearic Islands, the other from Greece.
PuraCorda is interested above all in unknown repertoire and forgotten composers. In addition, given the low profile that has been given to the figure of the female composer in the history of music, they have always decided to include at least one work by a woman in all their programs. Although consolidating itself as a string quartet, this group plans to vary its formation in order to embrace the entire chamber music repertoire that exists yet to be discovered.
PuraCorda has debuted its first show "Jewels from Northern Europe" in June de 2021 in Amsterdam (Netherlands), having received a grant from Balcon Scenes. They have participated in the 8th edition of the Nits Clàssiques de la Tramuntana festival (Mallorca) and have received a scholarship from the European program Eeemerging+ 2022.
Mayumi Sargent
Born in Mallorca, she studied violin with Ramón Andreu and Barry Sargent, besides attending David Peralta’s summer course in 2007. She continued her studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln (Cologne, Germany) with a Bachelor on the modern violin under Ariadne Daskalakis's tutelage while receiving baroque violin lessons from Richard Gwilt. She graduated with a “Cum Laude'' from the Master’s Instrument in Historic Perspective at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Netherlands), where she studied baroque violin with Antoinette Lohmann and modern violin with Johannes Leertouwer.
She’s been invited to play in youth orchestras around Spain, such as Jove Orquestra Nacional de Catalunya, Jove Orquestra Simfònica de Castelló, Jove Orquestra Barroca de Mallorca and Jove Orquestra de Cambra Illa de Menorca.As a young professional, she’s performed in Germany with the Kölner Kammerorchester, Neuen Rheinischen Kammerorchester Köln, Kölner Akademie, Orchester Düsseldorfer Altstadtherbst and for the contemporary composers collective Zeitklang, besides gaining seven years of experience as a pedagoge. She’s currently a member of the EOS Kammerorchester; specialized in contemporary music, they work with known Jazz
musicians, such as Niels Klein, Ingrid Laubrock and Lucia Cadotsch, recording new CD’s with music written exclusively for the ensemble. On the opposite spectrum, in May 2021 she’ll be performing with Concerto Köln.
In the Netherlands she’s a member of the Nieuwe Philharmonie Utrecht (both with original and modern instruments, besides participating in innovating projects such as historically informed performances of Brahms symphonies), a member of the Spanish baroque music group La Pícara and co-founder of PuraCorda (a string quartet specialized in HIP interpretation of 19th and early 20th century repertoire). She plays regularly with the Nederlandse BachVereniging and has had the pleasure to work as concertmaster under the baton of Jos Van Veldhoven and Peter Van Heyghen. She’s recently had the privilege of performing Verklärte Nacht (Schönberg) on gut strings with the Narratio Quartet for the opening concert of the 10th European Early Music Academy in Vannes (France) and recording the solo “Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder” of the Matthew Passions Ur-version under Johannes Leertouwer’s leadership.
In Spain she has played with Orquestra de Cambra Illa de Menorca, has been invited as coach to the Joven Orquesta Barroca de Andalucía, and besides co-organizing two different music festivals and a youth competition in Mallorca, she’s co-founder and concertmaster of Ensemble Tramuntana.
Eura Fortuny
She studied in Barcelona, Salzburg and Amsterdam and she’s received baroque viola lessons since 2010 from Emilio Moreno, Hiro Kurosaki, Alba Roca and Antoinette Lohmann. She has won competitions as soloist (Concurs Corda de Barcelona, autonomous community phase of the Intercentros Melómano competition), in chamber music ("I Island Music Competition of Menorca Island") and has received an Honorable Mention in the Eighth Chamber Music Competition "Higini Anglès" from the Diputació de Tarragona. She’s a member of Camerata Penedès and Ensemble Tramuntana and regularly collaborates with the GIOrquestra, amongst other orchestras. She is the violist of PuraCorda. In September 2021 she will start her Master studies with Antoinette Lohmann in the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
Panos Charalampidis
Born in Greece in 1989, where he finished his studies at the Thessaloniki State Conservatory with Professor Irina Dragneva.
During his higher studies in Brussels (Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussels) under the supervision of Professor Katalin Sebestyen, he participated in numerous international competitions in which he emerged as a finalist or winner. He performed as a soloist in many European countries such as Hungary, France, Belgium, Greece, Spain. Among others, he was trained by musicians such as Marco Ricci, Olivier Charlier, Ervin Shiff and Philippe Graffin.
Apart from his duties as a soloist, he has a very active life as a chamber musician. A founding member of the Nostos String Quartet, he has performed in many great halls across Europe and being tutored by world-renowned tutors and quartets such as the Danel Quartet, Eberhard Feltz, Stefan Metz, Luc Marie Aguilera and much more.
He currently lives in Amsterdam and is a member of Libero strijkorkest, the Sebestyen String Chamber Orchestra, the Het Promenade Orchestra and The String Soloists with whom he recorded 2 CDs with works by Haydn and Roland Dyens.
Antigoni Seferli
Born in Athens, Greece in 1991, she started playing the cello in 1998 and finished her studies with the Diploma (Bachelor) of the Athens Conservatory in 2013. Three years later she finished her second Bachelor with the profile of Early Music at the State University of Athens. Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, and in June 2019, her Master of Historicist Performance Practices at the Amsterdam Conservatory in the Viola Hoog class. He has participated in several international masterclasses with professors such as Viola de Hoog, Werner Matzke and Bruno Cocset and has played in orchestras under the baton of conductors such as Remy Baudet, Peter van Heyghen, Simon Rattle, Alain Altinoglu. Antigoni is a co-founder of PuraCorda and performs with several other chamber ensembles in the Netherlands and in Greece.