Friday 26 October 2012
at 7.30pmBenyounes Quartet
Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op.54 No.1
Mozart: String Quartet in d minor, K.421
Beethoven: String Quartet in c# minor, Op.131
Although Haydn was still employed by Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, he composed his Op.54 and Op.55 string quartets in 1788 for sale rather than for his employer. He sold them to Johann Tost, who was a bit of a wheeler-dealer and who had led the second violins in the orchestra at Esterhaza. Tost travelled to Paris and resold them there.
"The fruit of long and laborious endeavour" is how Mozart described the composition of the set of six quartets he dedicated to Joseph Haydn. Interestingly, this string quartet in d minor is the only quartet of Mozart's maturity that he composed in a minor key.
The string quartets that Beethoven composed in the three years before his death are considered to be his greatest, and arguably the quartet in c sharp minor is the greatest of them all. Whereas Op.130 ended with a fugue (in the original version), Op.131 begins with a fugue. The central andante movement of this quartet is perhaps the most profound and complex movement that Beethoven ever wrote.
The Benyounes Quartet was formed at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2007, where they were recipients of major prizes for string quartet. Winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious Julius Isserlis Scholarship, the quartet continued studies at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève with Professor Gabor Takacs–Nagy.
From September 2011, the Benyounes Quartet will hold the Richard Carne Junior Fellowship for String Quartet at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Recently chosen as Park Lane Group Young Artists, the quartet will give their Purcell Room debut in January 2012.
The quartet has appeared in recitals for music societies and festivals across Europe. This summer they are invited to Dartington Summer Music as string quartet in residence, and will also give recitals at West Cork Chamber Music Festival and Bellerive Festival in Switzerland. Other notable performances in the 2010/11 season included a recital at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and a tour of South West Scotland. In the summer of 2010, they were invited to perform an exciting new collaborative work by a young British composer in Verbier Festival in Switzerland, Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, and Aldeburgh Festival.
In 2008 the quartet was accepted onto the ProQuartet-CEMC program based in Paris offering them the opportunity to work with Eberhard Feltz and members of the Alban Berg and Cleveland string quartets. They were selected to attend IMS Prussia Cove and the Britten-Pears International Academy of String Quartets, and have participated in masterclasses with Gyorgy Kurtag, Andras Keller, David Waterman and Christoph Richter. The quartet is grateful for the continued support of Quatuor Ebene with whom they receive regular coaching in Paris.