Violist Rachel Roberts looks forward to performing at this year’s SPANNUNGEN: Musik im RWE-Kraftwerk Heimbach festival, one of the highlights of the German summer concert calendar.
A sought-after chamber musician, Rachel is delighted to play a prominent role in this festival, which takes place from 15 – 22nd June. SPANNUNGEN was founded in 1998 by the late Lars Vogt, who was a frequent musical partner of Rachel’s, and with whom she recorded two albums: Schubert, Britten and Shostakovich and Brahms and Schubert. Since his passing in 2022, the festival has come under the artistic directorship of Christian Tetzlaff, who upholds its aims to present world class chamber music within the unique atmosphere of the Heimbach hydroelectric plant, as well as to introduce young people to classical music.
The motto of this year’s festival is ‘the echo of time’, inspired by the book of the same name by American music critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler. Tetzlaff writes that “the motto expresses that compositions are more than just ‘sounding moving form’. They are contemporary testimonies and a living expression of their time.”
Joachim Jonas, Head of Plant Control at RWE Kraftwerk-Heimbach, adds that “music and hydropower both thrive on the river, on movement and on the power to have an impact across generations. Our hydroelectric power plant has been in operation for over 100 years… a living echo of the times. Just like the music of this festival, it connects the past, present and future in a special way.”
Rachel will perform alongside some of Europe’s most distinguished chamber musicians in six concerts over the course of the festival, including violinists Christian Tetzlaff, Hyeyoon Park and Antje Weithaas, violist Jan Larsen, and cellists Tanja Tetzlaff, Gustav Rivinius, Julia Hagen and Krzysztof Michalski.
In the first two concerts of the festival, she will perform Mozart’s String Quintet in G minor, KV 516 and Quintet for Horn, Violin, Two Violas and Cello in E flat major, KV 407 with horn player Pablo Neva Collazo, as well as Mendelssohn’s youthful Octet, op. 20. On 17th June, she will perform Mendelssohn’s Quartet in F minor, op 80, and Rudolf Leopold’s chamber version of Strauss’ Metamorphoses the following day. On the final day of the festival, young listeners are welcomed for a family concert narrated by Isabelle Vogt, in which Rachel performs Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. The festival closes with a programme of music by Mozart, composer-in-residence Donghoon Shin, Luciano Berio and Smetana, whose Quartet no. 1 in E minor ‘From My Life’ Rachel will play alongside violinists Christian Tetzlaff and Hana Chang, and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.
Full details of each programme in the festival may be found by following this link. All concerts in the festival will be recorded by Deutschlandfunk for future broadcast across Germany.
Photo credit: Georg Witteler
