Thursday 19 March 2026 | 20h00

Quintettes de Chostakovitch et Schubert
Conservatoire de Musique de Genève

Separated by more than a century, Franz Schubert and Dmitri Shostakovich each found in the quintet one of the most intimate means of expressing their inner truth. Both unite formal rigor with deeply personal confession: in one, the premonition of death; in the other, the struggle to survive in a world ruled by fear.

Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D. 956, composed in 1828 just weeks before his death, is a work of farewell—vast in scope and radiant in serenity. The addition of a second cello gives the texture an almost choral depth, where every voice breathes and blends into a harmony suspended between light and desolation. The Adagio, with its nearly motionless time, seems to abolish all weight to reach a peace from another world.

A century later, Shostakovich, in his Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57, explores a similar tension between gravity and brilliance. The contrapuntal writing, inherited from Bach, becomes a language of truth—a dense dialogue between piano and strings, traversed by lyrical impulses and restrained fury.

In both composers, chamber music becomes a space of absolute sincerity, where beauty is born from the conflict between shadow and light — a shared breath of humanity that transcends time and still speaks to us today.

The artistic directors of the Geneva International String Academy, Sergey Ostrovsky and Noémie Bialobroda , are joined by Eva Kobor , Jonathan Gerstner, Auguste Rahon and Ekaterina Bonyushkina, offering the audience a performance that combines virtuosity, sensitivity, and deep musical complicity.

D. Chostakovitch : Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57

F. Schubert : String Quintet in C major, D. 956

Sergey Ostrovsky - violin, Eva Kobor - violin, Noémie Bialobroda - viola, Jonathan Gerstner - cello, Auguste Rahon - cello, Ekaterina Bonyushkina - piano