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Tobias String Quartet |
On 9th of February new concert serie „Lossimuusika“ will begin at Kadriorg Art Museum. The Tobias String Quartet including Maano Männi (violin), Terje Männi (violin), Toomas Nestor (viola) and Aare Tammesalu (cello) will perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet No.17 in B-flat major and Edvard Grieg’s String Quartet in G minor. Concerts serie „Lossimuusika“ takes place every Sunday at 17 pm, before concert is possible to take part of pre-concert talk at 16.15 pm (in Estonian).
Kadriorg Palace is one the most well known and beautiful historic concert halls in Estonia offering memorable music experiences already for many decades. The tradition of performing music in the baroque palace goes back to 18th century when court music accompanied the daily life. The palace has had the pleasure to welcome many international artists and ensembles for outstanding performances.
One of the Estonia's most valued chamber ensembles Tobias String Quartet is best know for their colourful and vigorous performances. Since the foundation of the quartet in the beginning of the new millennium, they have regularly performed at different concert series and festivals in Estonia and abroad. During its active dozen years the concerts of Tobias String Quartet have taken them to almost all areas of the home country - from picturesque islets in West-Estonia to powerful Alexander's Cathedral on the eastern border in Narva, to ancient rural churches of South-Estonia, summer resort Pärnu, university town Tartu and surely to most prestigious concert halls in Tallinn - the Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn Town Hall, Hall of the Estonian National Opera etc. In addition to the concerts in Estonia, they have performed in Athens, Berlin, Chisinau, Helsinki, Nicosia, Odessa, Riga, St.Petersburg, Stockholm and Vaasa.
The name of the quartet is a tribute to one the most important and leading figures in formation and development of Estonian national music culture as well as the art of composing - Rudolf Tobias. He was a professor of the Berlin Royal Academy of Music (1914-1918) and the first Estonian composer who wrote music for a string quartet. In its work and performances Tobias String Quartet has greatly taken into account the creative and aesthetic principles of Tobias.
Estonian music holds an important place in the quartets repertoire as the quartet has performed a great part of the Estonian music created for quartet, including also less known or completely forgotten pieces. To proudly mark the 100-th anniversary year of string quartets in Estonia the Tobias String Quartet presented quite a few previously unknown pieces from the archives of the Estonian Theater and Music Museum, as premiere performance of course. In addition the ensemble has ordered many new pieces for the quartet from contemporary composers. These include composers like Tõnu Kõrvits, Andres Uibo and Robert Jürjendal.
As for many quartets the repertoire of the ensemble includes string quartet literature masterpieces by Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Antonín Dvorak and many others. In September 2003, in a cooperation with Estonian Record Productions, the quartet recorded their first CD with music by Fridrich Bruk for German label Erdenklang. Tobias String Quartet has also recorded music from Lepo Sumera, Veljo Tormis, Tõnis Kaumann, Jaan Rääts, Heimar Ilves and Tõnu Kõrvits for Estonian Radio. The quartet has had a chance to cooperate with many of the Estonian leading instrumentalist and vocalists. Of which the last project was together with the mezzo soprano Annely Peebo from the Volksoper Wienna.
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