Pavel Haas Quartet

Fast approaching its 25th anniversary, the Pavel Haas Quartet begins its all-Beethoven programme with the aptly named Quartetto serioso, which in the words of one scholar opens with ‘tremendous force, as of a coiled spring released’, and steps into the more relaxed, infinitely subtle world of his final quartet. The second half is held by the first of the ‘Razumovsky’ quartets, one of a remarkable trio of works. Beethoven, in response to a violinist who claimed that they were ‘not music’, declared that they were written not for him, ‘but for a later age!’