The Apollon Musagète Quartet – former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists and eloquent champions of contemporary music – makes its Proms debut, bringing the European premiere of the Fifth Quartet by one of Britain’s leading living composers, Colin Matthews – a work commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Festival.

It is paired with Webern’s youthful Langsamer Satz, an ecstatic piece that showcases the composer’s formal skill within a lyrical idiom.

Of Beethoven’s six Op. 18 quartets, No. 3 is the lightest, and the hardest to pin down. The scherzo is fleeting, and even the framing movements have an unusual delicacy and wistfulness about them.

Webern
Langsamer Satz 12’

Colin Matthews
String Quartet No. 5 12’
European premiere

Beethoven
String Quartet in D major, Op. 18 No. 3 26’

Apollon Musagète Quartet

There will be no interval