A terrific season opener for 2017

Royal Philharmonic Society award winners, the Ruisi Quartet are bringing four masterworks from the String Quartet repertoire to launch our Bath Recitals 2017 season

Two of the great classical quartet masters, Josef Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are represented in this concert. Perhaps the most famous of Mozart’s quartets, the so-called ‘Dissonance’ is named after the slow and slightly discordant introduction. Mozart dedicated the work to Haydn whose D minor quartet is just one of the 69 quartets from his vast output – this one dating from 1769.

The other two works in the programme take us to the ravishing sound world of Maurice Ravel and his first string quartet which he completed in 1903 aged 28. It is modelled on the string quartet by Debussy who much admired the work.

By contrast, Leoš Janáček’s first string quartet dates from 1924 and was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s novella ‘The Kreutzer Sonata, which was in turn inspired by Beethoven’s violin sonata No 9  known as the “Kreutzer Sonata” after it’s dedicatee.

With kind support from the Richard Carne Trust