Quartet Integra Presented by Liszt Academy

Founded in 2015, the Quartet Integra is already familiar to Budapest audiences as the winner of the 2021 Bartók World Competition. Their spring 2026 program promises a musical journey that moves from Viennese classicism through late-20th-century innovation and back again. The concert opens with a work by Joseph Haydn, heralded as the father of the string quartet. Written in 1781, the so-called “Russian Quartets” (Op. 33) marked, in Haydn’s own words, a “completely new and special style”. The nickname “The Bird” comes from the violin’s trills and chirping motifs that flutter throughout the piece. Péter Eötvös’s 1992 string quartet, Korrespondenz, takes its title from its central concept: a series of musical “scenes” inspired by fragments from the correspondence between Leopold Mozart and his son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The viola voices Wolfgang, the cello represents Leopold, and the two violins observe from the outside. Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor is one of the most personal and profound works in chamber music history. This introspective, emotionally charged masterpiece explores the depths of the human spirit; its third movement remains one of the most moving expressions of gratitude ever written in music.