A Viennese House Party

Lights up on four friends who get together to play string quartets (wild boys!). History remembers two of them as the greatest composers who ever lived - but who are the other two?

Tonight, all four take centre stage with time on their side, night-time string vibes and low notes stealing the show… if you think pop has all the fun, wait ’til these four have begun.

The scene: Vienna, 1780s. The city is buzzing to the music of Joseph Haydn and his contemporaries Carl von Dittersdorf and Jan Vanhal, and a younger arrival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Gossip in the gazettes and coffee houses is of the four getting together in a supergroup quartet. Perhaps trying out some of the cutting-edge musical ideas they’d later drop on Vienna’s concert-going public. In time, Dittersdorf and Vanhal slip from the spotlight their more famous friends own for centuries, but tonight’s concert rewinds the story. The music of the whole quartet breathes again. It lasts.