This candlelit evening at the atmospheric Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with the Chilingirian String Quartet and friends had more of a cosy Christmas feel than yet another World War I commemoration.
The Chilingirian Quartet’s second concert at the Kings Place Festival followed barely twenty minutes after their preceding concert had concluded. Three factors were common between both events: the playing of two works without an interval, the presence of Joseph Haydn, and, most importantly, a uniformly high standard of musicianship.
For the first of two short concerts that the Chilingirian Quartet presented on the opening evening of the Kings Place Festival, they focused on two quartets by Joseph Haydn. Both were written in 1793 following a previous highly successful trip Haydn had made to England, and were intended to satisfy the demand of London audiences.The String Quartet in C, Op. 74 no.
Le Chilingirian Quartet a proposé au Shakespeare's Globe un programme marqué par l'expérience personnelle de la guerre et transfiguré par le Quatuor pour la fin du temps de Messiaen.
Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge is paired with Haydn's Die sieben letzten Worte, a journey from agony to transcendence in which the agony proves the more honest companion.
From Three Screaming Popes to Pictures at an Exhibition, a pair of works inspired by paintings frame a violin concerto by Béla Bartók at London's Southbank Centre.
