Wagner - Vorspiel & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde arranged for string quartet & accordion

In 1880, Emmanuel Chabrier went to hear Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Munich – an occasion when after a certain amount of gasping and snuffling, Chabrier burst out with ‘Ten years of my life I’ve been waiting to hear that [opening] A on the cellos!’ In order to become sensitive to the specific eccentricities of the composers whose works we usually study and perform, we try to also get acquainted with other music, which represents something opposite to them. The polemic between Richard Wagner on the one hand, and Brahms and many French composers on the other triggered our interest for the big genre of the 19th century of which string quartets usually steer clear: Wagner’s romantic operas. We asked composer Max Knigge to re-imagine the opening and closing sequences of Richard Wagner’s radical opera Tristan & Isolde. We are happy that accordionist Vincent van Amsterdam could join us for this project. With the addition of his instrument, our color palette instantly gained a com