Chamber Music Concert

The combination of woodwind timbres with a string quartet produces striking colouristic effects, appreciated not only by composers of earlier eras but by our own contemporaries as well. Although the style of Guillaume Connesson’s Double Quatuor (Double Quartet), composed in 1994, clearly draws on minimal music, it also reveals the composer’s fascination with the instrumental music of the great Italian masters, Antonio Vivaldi and Arcangelo Corelli. Here, in true Baroque fashion, a quartet of flute, oboe and two clarinets is set against the string section.

In the three-movement Concerto for Flute, Oboe, Harp and String Quartet, composed in 1916 by the British composer Arnold Bax, the strings are often treated on almost equal terms with the woodwinds, to the point where the harp itself seems to assume the accompanying role. The work’s noble beauty is especially evident in the central movement, Cavatina, where the lyrical melody, first entrusted to the flute over a harp accompaniment, is then taken up by the oboe and finally by the violin.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy composed his Octet in E flat major, Op. 20, for four violins, two violas and two cellos in 1825, when he was just sixteen years old. Originally conceived as a gift for his violin teacher, Eduard Rietz, it received its first private performance under Rietz's direction. This work of a musical prodigy, brimming with youthful exuberance and striking originality, had to wait eleven years for its public premiere, having first undergone a thorough revision by its composer.

Grzegorz Zieziula

Programme

• Arnold Bax — Concerto for Flute, Harp and String Quartet
• Guillaume Connesson — Double Quatuor for flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet and string quartet
• ... intermission
• Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy — Octet in E flat major, Op. 20