Quatuor Agate, YCAT artist and recent ECHO Rising Star, applies its trademark lyricism and tonal richness to two alluring compositions. Vienna supplies the common thread that links the first of Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ Quartets, published in the imperial Habsburg city just weeks after the composer’s death, and Korngold’s First String Quartet, first performed in Vienna in […]

Jonathan Swensen has more than justified his nomination by Gramophone as ‘One to Watch’. The Danish cellist, recipient of the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant, was awarded joint First Prize at the 2024 Naumburg International Cello Competition. His Wigmore Hall debut recital includes the première of a new work written for him by Grawemeyer Award-winning composer Bent […]

Light and shade, uplifting wit and insight belong to the qualities cultivated by the period-instrument players of Trio Goya. The life-enhancing partnership of violinist Kati Debretzeni, cellist Sebastian Comberti and fortepianist Maggie Cole, notes The Strad, ‘plays with a naturalness and artless simplicity that make most modern outfits sound decidedly effortful and overwrought by comparison’.

The London-based Marmen Quartet, joint winners of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition, is known for the pulse-quickening commitment of its playing and deep reach of its interpretations. Haydn’s ‘Dream’ Quartet, so called for its rhapsodic slow movement, provides the sophisticated companion to the last major work that Beethoven completed.

Schaghajegh Nosrati’s consummate explorations of Bach’s polyphony inform her sensitivity to the technical and musical complexities of Alkan’s keyboard compositions. The German pianist, born in Bochum in 1989, returns to Wigmore Hall following her acclaimed Bach collaboration with Sir András Schiff last season with a selection of pieces from Alkan’s almighty Symphonie for solo piano.

Informed equally by its deep understanding of the core string quartet repertoire and of the freedom and flexibility of its native Scotland’s folk traditions, the Maxwell String Quartet can be relied upon to cast fresh light on familiar works. It turns to the fourth of Haydn’s ‘Sun’ Quartets, a work infused with charm and wit, […]

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, […]

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 […]