Dezső Ránki & Keller Quartet Presented by Liszt Academy

There are concerts where the musicians are so brilliant that the audience couldn’t care less what they are playing. Then there are concerts where the programme is comprised of such popular pieces that nobody cares who is playing them. Then there is this recital where double Kossuth Prize laureate Dezső Ránki plays with Keller Quartet (founded in 1987) and the programme features three major masterpieces. The programme opens with the five-movement Trout Quintet, which introduced the public to the then unknown violin-viola-cello-double bass-piano combination, and in the variation movement of which Schubert also developed an earlier popular melody. Shostakovich makes similar self-references in his most famous string quartet – only from many more works. The concert closes with another Russian string quartet, Tchaikovsky’s first attempt, and his greatest success, in the genre.