Monday 25th November 2019
Geoff Cooke Memorial Concert

7:30pm at the Penrith Methodist Church
Tickets: £20 (students £2), at the door or in advance.

The Elias String Quartet was formed at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1998; they have since established themselves as one of the finest chamber ensembles of their generation. 

From 2005 to 2009 they were the resident quartet at Sheffield’s ‘Music in the Round’, taking over from the Lindsay Quartet, and are now quartet in residence at the RNCM where they teach and perform. They have performed worldwide and explored a wide-ranging repertoire, including many contemporary commissions.   

Former BBC New Generation Artists, they mounted the ‘Beethoven Project’ with the support of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust to study and perform all the Beethoven quartets. In 2013 they performed  the complete cycle in six memorable concerts in venues around Cumbria and in other parts of the UK. Their recently released CDs of the Beethoven quartets, recorded from live performances at the Wigmore Hall, have received glowing reviews.

Their programme in Penrith alternates between the late eighteenth and twenty first centuries. Beethoven was 27 before he tackled the string quartet - a sign of how seriously he took the task of following in the footsteps of Haydn and Mozart. The Quartet in D op.18 no.3 was the first of six quartets to be composed.   It makes a civilized and engaging start to the evening.

Matthew Hindson is an Australian composer born in 1968 and at present professor of composition at the Sydney Conservatorium. He has been described as ‘one of Australia’s most exciting and innovative contemporary composers’. His Quartet no.2 is dedicated to ‘all scientists who strive to help us understand the machinations of the universe’. It is conceived from the idea of a star exploding, building from silence to chaos in an adrenalin rush of notes. It was premiered by the Elias Quartet in 2013 during a national tour of Australia.

Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor op.132 concludes the recital. The five late quartets occupied the composer for most of the last four years of his life – another intense and all absorbing effort that has inspired and deeply affected audiences ever since.

Preview by John Upson

Programme

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