With: Jonathan Sparey violin, Caroline Wolff violin, James Boyd viola, Moray Welsh cello.

Much more than a string quartet weekend, for their début at Jesmond Dene House the Fitzwilliam is joined by friends in order to perform quintets, sextets and an octet, some of the greatest works in the chamber repertoire – ideally suited to the setting of the high-ceilinged wood-panelled Great Hall at Jesmond Dene House.

After a long and highly distinguished career, the Fitzwilliam retains a freshness, a youthfulness and a preparedness to take on new challenges which makes them one of the most interesting and best loved of British quartets.

Each concert has a theme: for the Friday evening concert, ‘Two Russians at Fifty’, they resurrect Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.6 (the quartet formed a close friendship with the composer in the 1970s and premièred his final three quartets in West Europe) and Tchaikovsky’s Sextet with James Boyd and Moray Welsh.

Saturday is a day of Bruckner and Schubert and the weekend finishes joyously with ‘Teenage Genius’: Caroline Wolfe and Jonathan Sparey join the six players who have already performed for Mendelssohn’s Octet.

Insight into the music and its performance is provided through Alan George’s inimitable talks.

www.fitzwilliamquartet.org

The Programme