Fiachra Garvey, founder and artistic director of the West Wicklow Chamber Music Festival and London’s Classical Vauxhall, continues to enrich the chamber music scene in his native Ireland and in the UK with imaginative programming. He makes his Wigmore Hall solo debut with a fascinating coupling of sonatas by Beethoven and Rachmaninov.

Recordings of the music in this morning’s programme feature in the Doric String Quartet’s capacious discography. Its probing interpretations of both works are hallmarked by the group’s tonal richness and the intense intimacy of its music making, qualities ideally matched to the genial warmth of Mendelssohn’s First String Quartet and impassioned emotions of Janáček’s ‘Kreutzer […]

‘Passionate, uninhibited and spell-binding,’ declared the Independent in response to one of the Brentano String Quartet’s performances. The ensemble, formed in 1992 at the Juilliard School of Music, directs its famously warm sound and esprit de corps to the cause of the second of Haydn’s Op. 54 quartets, written to display the talents of the Hungarian violinist Johann Tost, […]

To mark the 15th anniversary of their collaboration in 2020, Philippe Cassard, Anne Gastinel and David Grimal recorded Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ and ‘Archduke’ Trios. The resulting album preserves interpretations that surge with explosive emotions and commitment. They now offer Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ in company with another evergreen masterwork of the piano trio repertoire, Dvořák’s introspective ‘Dumky’ Trio.

Dowland, admired by contemporaries for his ‘sad and doleful’ harmonies, distilled his profound feeling for heartfelt emotions into his ‘Lachrimae pavan’. He placed the work at the head of his Lachrimae or Seaven Teares, a matchless collection of pieces for five-part instrumental consort comprising seven inspired versions of the ‘Lachrimae pavan’ and 14 other dances, among […]