Metamorfosi d’archi

The Stauffer String Ensemble, conducted by renowned violinist and conductor Kolja Blacher, took centre stage in Metamorphoses for Strings, held on 24 April at the Giovanni Arvedi Auditorium of the Museo del Violino in Cremona. The ensemble was joined by cellist Joël Geniet, a student of Frans Helmerson at the Stauffer Academy.

Part of the Stauffer Concerts series, the event marked an important stage in the artistic development of the Academy’s young musicians. The Stauffer String Ensemble brings together students from across the Academy’s various programmes and is distinguished by its flexible formation, which adapts to the requirements of each repertoire. Students from the Concertmaster Programme take turns leading the ensemble as concertmaster, engaging directly with the artistic and musical responsibilities of this pivotal role.

Spanning three centuries of music, the programme opened with Prayers by Noam Sheriff, a meditative work rooted in Jewish tradition. This was followed by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Cello Concerto in A major, performed by Joël Geniet in an intense dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The concert concluded with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, written for twenty-three solo strings: a vast musical canvas suspended between memory and transformation, which gave the evening both its title and its deeper meaning.