Aho, Kalevi: String quartet No. 5

In memoriam Elke Albrecht

Kalevi Aho composed his 5th string quartet in autumn 2021 as a commission from the Kamus Quartet. It is dedicated to the memory of the German-Austrian musicologist Elke Albrecht, who died on 29.9.2021 at the age of only 40. Albrecht was one of the leading experts on Finnish opera; her doctoral thesis was about operas inspired by the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala, and shortly before she died, she was working on a second doctoral thesis, about Aho's concertos and concertante symphonies. The overall mood of the quartet is elegiac, and the basic material derives from the musical letters in Elke Albrecht's name: e-a-b(=b-flat)-re(=d)-c-h(=b). The finale is a dreamy, quick, virtuoso waltz. The build-ups are not resolved; at the end, the vital energy gradually expires.