Details

BBC Proms Chamber Music One of the UK's leading string quartets - and former Radio 3 New Generation Artists - pairs two strikingly original works in homage to two anniversary composers. Haydn's quartet comes from a period in the 1780s when he declared he was writing 'in a new and special way', and the second-movement set of variations is characteristically unexpected and quirky in its shifting contrasts of mood. Britten's atmospheric and evocative Second Quartet was composed in 1945 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the death of Henry Purcell, and the finale is a 'Chacony' - an extended set of variations - which offers an extraordinary glimpse of Purcell's sound-world refracted through the imagination of a composer who loved his music. There will be no interval.

Creatives/Company

Music(s): Haydn (String Quartet in F sharp minor Op 50 No 4 - 19 mins), Britten (String Quartet No 2 - 31 mins)