With this staging of the string quartets No. 1 „Kreutzer Sonata” and No. 2 „Intimate Letters” by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), we aim to continue our successful collaboration with the renowned Kuss Quartet, which began to great acclaim with the Beethoven evening „Force and Freedom.” The fact that both of Janáček’s quartets—premiered in 1924 and 1928—like the adapted Beethoven quartets, stem from the late creative period of their respective composers, and rank among the Kuss Quartet’s declared favorites, contributed significantly to this programming decision.

For us, there is yet another reason to approach these works. In his first engagement with the most refined form of chamber music, Janáček directly referenced a famous piece by Beethoven—the „Kreutzer Sonata” dedicated to violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. Janáček’s reflection on Leo Tolstoy’s novella of the same name, which revolves around love, sex, jealousy, and murder, provides a thematic bridge to Heiner Müller’s „Quartet”.

From a dramaturgical perspective, the juxtaposition of the „Kreutzer Sonata” with Janáček’s second quartet—composed five years later—proves especially captivating. The latter reveals the 74-year-old composer as a passionate lover, expressing unconditional affection for the much younger Kamila Stösslová, to whom he addressed these „Intimate Letters” as a testament of tender desire. The temporal reversal of a typical relationship arc—first the murderous jealousy of a betrayed husband, followed by the rapturous devotion of a man newly in love—becomes, in Janáček’s catalogue, a compelling play of opposites.

Heiner Müller „Quartet”

A gripping dramatic tension emerges from the encounter between these late string quartets and the theater text „Quartet” (1980/81), in which Heiner Müller (1929–1995) inverts Janáček’s principle of doubling. While Janáček expanded Tolstoy’s duo of violin and piano into a string quartet, Müller reduces the cast of the famous epistolary novel „Les Liaisons dangereuses” (1782) by Choderlos de Laclos to two voices. He titles the resulting work—also, like Janáček’s second quartet, presented as intimate correspondence—„Quartet”, allowing his protagonists to exchange (gender) roles.

The result is a hall of mirrors of human love and desire, in which Janáček’s music becomes both impulse and commentary on Müller’s literary composition. With a pair of actors and dancers alongside the Kuss Quartet, we are developing a production that explores the fragile hope of finding refuge in the seemingly safe realm of the private—especially in times of profound political and social upheaval.

Yet the private sphere reveals itself to be a battlefield of mutual destruction. It is within the fissures of the social fabric that irreconcilable contradictions emerge—those that secretly wear down the individual and expose the retreat into intimacy as an illusion. In what appears to be comforting human closeness, the abyss of a society is revealed—one that appears collectively unified on the surface, but inwardly acts in destructive ways.

The virtuosic trumpeter Paul Hübner—who expands his instrument with electronically altered sounds—and the young, versatile percussionist Lorenzo Riessler lend the texts a radical sharpness and critical intensity that shatter all romanticization and direct the gaze toward the hidden wounds that run through our human coexistence.

On December 30, 2025, the 30th anniversary of Heiner Müller’s death will be commemorated.