Intimacy

Intimacy

Intimacy is a transdisciplinary chamber music concert centered around Leoš Janáček’s string quartets, with additional compositions by Josef Suk, Antonin Dvořák and Laure M. Hiendl. The concert aims to offer an immersive experience with fascinating Czech music and its resonance in our contemporary world, a journey between strong human feelings, evocative music and original harmonies.

The two string quartets of Janáček are deeply connected with writings: the first one ‘Kreutzer sonata’ is a psychological drama depicting a woman from Tolstoy’s novel, with moments of conflict as well as emotional outbursts. The second one, ‘Intimate letters’, is the composer’s view on love, referring to his own passionate story and his letters to the woman he was in love with at the end of his life. Central to the program is the music of Leoš Janáček, but a foray into Josef Suk and Antonin Dvořák serves as a moment of rest and other views on the quartet’s stories. Additionnaly to the existing Czech music, a comissioned work by Austrian composer Laure M. Hiendl will give a new perspective about both music and the topics of the string quartets, starting from Janáček samples.

The quartet on stage is surrounded by a forest of moving and flowing fabrics, on which abstract but dreamy video images are projected, filmed in Czechia through different seasons. Through image and sound, the concertgoer can leave the rational world for a moment and dive into an emotional world.

Creation 2028.02.04 String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam

Video Images

Although this programme consists of various pieces, the video images would create coherence through an overall visual approach. The video artist collected video material in the Czech Republic, following the footsteps of the composers, during a few residencies there (several seasons to follow), and set up a visual repertoire that matches the mood of the pieces in the concert.

She startet using this material and set design for Janáček’s piano music, in a recital with Severin von Eckardstein in 2025. This new project will be a second part of her path with the composer.

Each piece has its own atmosphere and especially its own rhythm, sometimes in absolute agreement with the music, sometimes against it, but always thoughtfully in relation to the whole. In terms of aesthetics, the visual language is rooted in the history of of 20th-century Czech and Polish cinema but approached in a contemporary way, with colour footage in Polaroid-like colours combined with a unique super 16-like musical grain, shot in various landsapes of the composers.

Set Design

The video images fills a large surface of the scene opening — the audience plunges into an evocative pictorial atmosphere, immersive.

To play with the verticality of some of Janáček’s compositional techniques, in combination with the evocative character of the music and titles, the video images are projected onto 3 or 4 pieces of flexible fabric hanging from the theatre fly bars.

The width of the fabric pieces aren’t equal, creating a rhythm. The fabrics move slightly with the musician’s movements: it is very light and is hardly loaded down. There is also the possibility of playing with depth: some pieces of fabric could be installed in front of the string quartet, others behind, creating a forest-like effect. Playing with several pieces of fabric instead of one single projection surface allows also to adapt the projection to narrower or wider stages in an elegant way.

The video projection uses the technique of video mapping, with a very precise result onto the fabric. One single horizontal image is cut in several pieces.

To keep the set design very light and easily to transport, the concert is only suitable for halls with a fly system, or at least light bars or any other possibility to hang the fabrics from the ceiling