February 26th

CRÉPUSCULE DE L'ÂME
Seelendämmerung.  Twilight of the Soul.

MUSIQUE AU CAMPUS #2
Thursday, February 26th 2026, 20h

Haute ´École de Musique de Genève, Neuchâtel
Campus Arc 1, Auditorium 1

Espace de l'Europe 21, Neuchâtel

I am very excited to let you know that on Thursday, February 26th 2026 I will perform this concert of haunting repertoire, together with the Quatuor Vermeille and Johan Girardin, piano. Our program bridges the intimate world of the salon with the grand emotional landscapes of the early 20th century exploring the themes of love, loss, and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.

​The evening opens with the lush, Mediterranean melancholy of Ottorino Respighi’s Il Tramonto, based on the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, followed by Giacomo Puccini’s Crisantemi, a brief but heartbreaking elegy that remains one of the most poignant works ever written for strings.

The programshifts toward the spiritual and the profound with Maurice Ravel’s Deux Mélodies hébraïques, featuring the soaring, liturgical beauty of the Kaddisch.

The center of the evening is marked by Viktor Ullmann’s String Quartet No. 3.
Written in 1943 in Theresienstadt, this masterpiece is a defiant assertion of beauty and intellectual rigor in the face of darkness.

The concert concludes with the rare and evocative 3 Poèmes by Guillaume Lekeu. Utilizing the full ensemble—voice, piano, and string quartet—these works are a pinnacle of French Symbolist music, shimmering with "fin de siècle" atmosphere.

• Susanne Schimmack, Mezzosoprano - Professeure de Chant HEM
• Johan Girardin, Piano
• Quatuor Vermeille:
  • Ada Aebi & Mathilde Reymond (Violin)
  • Anaëlle Laurès (Viola)
  • Eléonore Hirt (Cello)