Belcea Quartet

Not so long ago, the Belcea Quartet completed an ambitious project, an international series of concerts in which they spotlighted the complete quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven. In Antwerp, this outstanding British foursome will be showing their excellent mastery of the German composer's music, playing his Fourteenth String Quartet, a late and melancholic work in which Beethoven unleashes unprecedented formal experiments in no less than seven movements. Joseph Haydn's unfinished String Quartet in D minor, too, is suffused with the spirit of autumn and displays measured mastery. The two movements were his last compositions in the genre that still today bears his stamp. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Third String Quartet in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War as a telling statement on war and the suffering it brings.