Belcea Quartet

In autumn 2015 the Belcea Quartet will be celebrating its twentieth anniversary. These four London musicians have announced celebrations on a grand scale, with a series of concerts devoted entirely to the Second Viennese School. This programme offers a foretaste.
Anton Webern’s 1909 work ‘Fünf Sätze’ is one of the key works in his quartet oeuvre. It is made up of filigree work finely chiselled down to the square millimetre, with every note allotted the maximum eloquence.
Brahms’ Second String Quartet is a perfect synthesis of structure and poetry, refined counterpoint and romantic passion. And the composer took plenty of time to polish up the fine details of the score: no less than eight years in fact.
But Schubert’s Thirteenth reached its conclusion considerably faster. This Viennese schoolmaster only needed little more than a month for this monumental work. But then he was able to tap his own theatre music for ‘Rosamunde’, from which the quartet takes its nickname.