Fitzwilliam Quartet • 6.30pm

The Fitzwilliam Quartet make a welcome return to Conway Hall in a concert featuring a rare performance of Rachmaninoff’s early quartet, in honour of his 150th birthday. They complete their programme with some wonderfully entertaining Strauss, Mozart’s A major quartet, dedicated to Haydn and admired by Beethoven, as well as Tchaikovsky’s final quartet, written as a memorial for Czech composer and violinist, Ferdinand Laub.

“The Fitzwilliam String Quartet, in my opinion, is, and has been for many years, Britain’s premier string quartet ensemble…….a flagship British ensemble that should be the pride of that nation.”
Jerry Dubins, Fanfare (2015)

Lucy Russell (violin)
Andrew Roberts (violin)
Alan George (viola)
Heather Tuach (cello)

Programme:

J Strauss II | Tritsch-Tratsch Polka Op.214
J Strauss II | Pizzicato Polka
Mozart | Quartet in A K.464
Rachmaninoff | Quartet No.1 (incomplete)
Tchaikovsky | Quartet No.3 in E♭ minor Op.30

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Pre-Concert Recital: Paolo Rinaldi • 5.30pm

Italian pianist Paolo Rinaldi kicks off our summer season in style with two much-loved gems of the piano repertoire. Brahms’ hugely inventive set of variations on a theme by Handel was presented to Clara Schumann as a gift on her forty-second birthday. Robert Schumann’s Second Piano Sonata was his final attempt in the genre, and was received somewhat critically by Clara, who wrote that she would play it “if necessary, but the masses, the public, and even the connoisseurs for whom one is really writing, don’t understand it.” Much to Clara’s surprise, perhaps, the work became incredibly popular and it provides a passionate, virtuosic conclusion to Rinaldi’s pre-concert recital.Paolo Rinaldi (piano)

Programme:

Brahms | Variations on a theme by Handel Op.24
Schumann | Piano Sonata No.2 in G minor Op.22