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Details
St Mary's Church
Church Road
Barnes
London
SW13 9HL
England
Programme
Felix Mendelssohn – Capriccio for String Quartet in E minor, Op.81, No.3
Freya Waley-Cohen – String Quartet 'Dust'
Franz Schubert – String Quartet no.14 in D minor 'Death and the Maiden', D.810
Performers
Albion Quartet
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
Mendelssohn is a composer whose music is inextricably linked to the theatre, primarily through the incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. In this programme he is represented by a short, playful piece for string quartet.
Dust was written by Freya Waley-Cohen, sister of the group’s first violin, Tamsin. “While writing this quartet I was thinking about the artist Charlotte Salomon, as well as David Foenkinos’ book about her, titled ‘Charlotte’. Threads of thoughts and ideas I found in her ‘Leben? oder Theater’ became interwoven with my thoughts while writing this quartet, particularly the way Foenkinos describes parts of her life as becoming subsumed as if in a daydream, as well as her dry and strange wit.”
Schubert, like Mendelssohn, wrote a large body of work for the theatre. His great 'Death and The Maiden' String Quartet, with its grand gestures and high drama is ideally suited to the theatrical world. He first composed 'Death and the Maiden' as a song in 1817, inspired by a poem of the same name by Matthias Claudius. The poem draws on both the 19th-century fascination with Gothic horror stories and a desire to find an acceptance of mortality.
Formed in 2016, the Albion Quartet brings together four of the UK’s exceptional young string players who are establishing themselves rapidly on the international stage. Recent debuts include the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, the Wigmore Hall and Town Hall/Symphony Hall Birmingham. Their fourth recording with Signum has just been released to critical acclaim.
