Castalian String Quartet
25th April 2020, 19:30
In 2018 the Castalian Quartet received the prestigious inaugural MERITO String Quartet Award & Valentin Erben Prize and won a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award. They have also won prizes at several international competitions, and have been the resident quartet at festivals in France and the UK. Tours have taken them as far afield as China and Columbia—they are very much in demand, and we are delighted to have them with us to conclude our 2019-20 season. The Castalian String Quartet will play:
- Haydn: Quartet in F, Op.77, No.2
- Schumann: Quartet in A, Op.41, No.3
- Brahms: Quartet in C minor, Op.51, No.1
They open the concert with the last quartet by the "Father of the Quartet", written some eight years after Mozart's death, and when Beethoven was working on his first set of quartets.
Having heard Schumann's first quartet earlier in the season, in this concert we can hear the Castalian Quartet playing his final offering in this genre, one with several interesting and original touches.
The first of Brahms's string quartets had a slow gestation, with the composer constantly revising it. The result is remarkable; the orchestral scale of the outer movements contrasts wonderfully with the intimacy of the inner movements, while the work overall has a great sense of cohesion.
