Debut Erinys Quartet

Admittedly, naming a string quartet after the Furies, the three Greek goddesses of revenge, is a touch weird. When four students at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki joined together under this name in 2018, it was more of a joke, as cellist Stergios Theodoridis explains: “The line-up at the time consisted of three women and me, and we found the idea of the three taking revenge on me simply amusing.” Even though there is now gender parity in the ensemble, the name has remained and their fame has grown. The Erinys Quartet, which is the resident quartet at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, has just been awarded a prize from the Esterházy Foundation. This includes a debut at Lucerne Festival. The four musicians have come up with a program that is musically aligned with the “Open End” theme. In Debussy’s sole string quartet, melodies and rhythms proliferate without being constrained by bars, periods, or movement endings. Webern’s pieces create a cosmos of infinity in the smallest of spaces. And in Terra Memoria, the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho brings the dead back to life in our memories.