Kings Place Festival: The Chilingirian Quartet excel in Enescu and Haydn

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.

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.

The renowned Chilingirian Quartet gave an electrifying performance of celebrated string quartets by Bartok, Haydn and Beethoven at London's Wigmore Hall.The concert began with an outstanding rendition of Bartok’s Fourth String Quartet (1928), which consists of five movements in a loose ‘arch’ form.

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. 

Serious music ill-matched by filmic limitations as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra tackles Messiaen’s epic “symphony” as part of the Southbank’s cross-genre festival. 

The road to immersion is paved with modish deflections as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs 20th-century English string music.