LOVE & DEVOTION
String Quartets by Haydn, Mozart & Mendelssohn
Image Credit: © Helen White
★★★★ “ This was superlative playing…” Limelight, 2023
Image credit: Helen White
ARTISTS
AHE STRING QUARTET
The AHE has lift off with a program of three immensely satisfying quartets. All have moments of such emotional intensity that they seem to come from a place of deep personal feeling. So is love in the air?
The D major is one of Haydn’s most enjoyable quartets. So expressive is the second movement that an early biographer placed it in a sequence of works stemming from an “acute emotional crisis”. He even filled the evidence gap with the death of an invented lover. Of course, Haydn being Haydn, such heartbreaking tenderness butts rudely up against downright zaniness in the bamboozling minuet, so riddled with wrong accents as to defy toe tapping, and the hilarious finale, which positively encourages it with bursts of full-blooded abandon.
Mozart’s D minor quartet dates from a blissful period of his life just post his marriage to Constanze, but if it’s infused with love, it’s as much for his new friend and father figure, Haydn, as it is for his bride. This was one of the quartets that prompted Haydn’s assessment of Wolfgang as “the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name”. It is a superbly crafted piece, poignant, even tragic, in mood, and the finale’s set of variations is as deeply felt as those in the same key from the preceding work in the concert.
The AHE follow up 2023’s revelatory rendition of Mendelssohn’s A minor quartet with its companion piece in E flat. Teen romances have produced few lasting works of art, but when the smitten composer is a prodigy to rival Mozart, you can expect more. The 18-year-old Felix dedicated his Opus 12 quartet literally to the girl-next-door, one Betty Pistor, but she responded by dumping him. The legacy of this doomed affair is a great, glorious, mature work as rich as romantic opera; brimming with melody and rule-smashing invention.
A concert by lovers for lovers, especially of wonderful music and music making.
PROGRAM
HAYDN
String Quartet Op. 20 No. 4 in D major
MOZART
String Quartet No. 15 in D minor K. 421
MENDELSSOHN
String Quartet Op. 12 No. 1 in E flat major
PERFORMANCES
Select a location & date from the list below to book
+ Canberra | Thursday 15 February | 7 PM | Wesley Music Centre, Forrest
* Thursday 15 February, 7pm Wesley Music Centre, Forrest
+ Berry | Friday 16 FEBRUARY | 7 PM | Berry Uniting Church Hall |
* Friday 16 February, 7pm Berry Uniting Church Hall
+ Southern Highlands | Saturday 17 FEBRUARY | 4 PM | Bowral Memorial Hall
* Saturday 17 February, 4pm Bowral Memorial Hall