"Is it necessary?"

This is the question Ludwig van Beethoven poses at the end of his life, in his last string quartet. A simple yet profound question…

This concert offers three visions, which, within the framework of the celebrations of the bicentenary of Beethoven's death, is not a simple static tribute but a reflection in motion.

With The Unanswered Question , Charles Ives imagines music suspended in time: the strings create a still landscape, a trumpet tirelessly poses the same question, while the woodwinds try, in vain, to answer it. But the mystery remains complete.

Beethoven, for his part, dares to respond in String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 : “It must be!” But his music hesitates, resists, surges forth, as if the answer were never quite certain. In the version for string orchestra, reinterpreted through the lens of Leonard Bernstein’s legacy, this tension becomes collective and takes on an almost Mahlerian dimension.

Finally, with the Serenade based on Plato's Symposium , Leonard Bernstein takes us elsewhere: the question becomes a dialogue, inspired by Plato. Eva Zavaro's solo violin sings, dances, dreams, like a human voice in search of meaning, between emotion and reflection.

Three works, three ways of asking the same question, three visions of necessity and doubt, between Beethovenian heritage, Ives' modernity and Bernstein's humanism.

What if music didn't provide answers... but simply helped us, with Les Apaches, to listen differently?