Sunday 9 August
Aroha String Quartet
PROGRAMME
Haydn: String Quartet in Eb, Opus 64, No 6
Samuel Barber: String Quartet in B minor, Opus 11
Ross Carey: Toccatina
Beethoven: String Quartet No 10 in Eb, Opus 74 (“Harp”)
Robert Ibell (cello), Konstanze Artmann (violin), Haihong Liu (violin), Zhongxian Jin (viola)
Our good friends the Aroha String Quartet return after their brilliant 2025 performance of Schubert’s Octet. Their programme, as ever, is a delight, opening with Haydn’s wonderfully lyrical Eb Major quartet, particularly acclaimed for its brilliant last movement.
American composer Samuel Barber is renowned for his famous Adagio for Strings. The Adagio is actually the second movement of his Opus 11 String Quartet, written in 1936. Barber wrote the arrangement of the Adagio for string orchestra in the same year and much later used the same music again in a choral setting for his Agnus Dei. In Opus 11, the famous Adagio is surrounded by two very lively movements.
After the interval, New Zealander Ross Carey’s Toccatina paves the way for one of Beethoven’s most popular quartets, known as “The Harp” for its striking pizzicato section in the first movement. The slow movement, a beautiful Adagio, is followed by a vigorous Scherzo. Unusually for Beethoven, the last movement is a theme and variations, some lively, some gentle and lyrical, before the coda gathers the pace to a brilliant conclusion.