AN evening of musical time travel is on the programme for a performance by concert prize winning Karski String Quartet at the Millgate Arts Centre, Delph on March 2.
Named after Polish World War II resistance hero, Jan Karski, the Quartet will play pieces from three different centuries, transporting their audience from the French Revolution to the current millennium.
The concert begins with Austrian composer Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet Op 76 in G major No 1 – a title which says little of the music.
Composed in 1797, it is the fulfilment of 40 years’ experience, full of innovation and new ideas. This music takes the audience away from daily concerns into a world of new sounds.
It is full of drama and intensity, enabling the musicians to be virtuosic and improvisatory; in parts light and airy then exploding with loud dramatic contrast. The effect has not diminished over the years.
Fast forward to the 20th Century and one of Britain’s best loved composer’s Benjamin Britten.
A brilliant instrumental composer, his String Quartet No. 2 in C Major, has been described as a work of startling originality; one of the most important string quartets of the 20th century.
Britten composed the quartet for a commemorative concert celebrating the 250th anniversary of the death of Henry Purcell in 1695.
It was premiered in November 1945 – just after the end of World War II – which might be significant in bringing out Britten’s best.
Coming up to date, the Karski Quartet, formed in Brussels in 2018, includes a work written in 2006 by Simon Rowland-Jones.
Commissioned by Blyth Valley Chamber Music, the String Quartet No 3 may not yet be universally known and is too young to have been tested by time.
However, music critic Paul Driver writing in the Sunday Times in 2007 about a programme of Rowland-Jones’ work said: “I can hardly think of a contemporary composer who has reinvented tonality with the freshness of this. It was quartet-writing in excelsis”.
To hear live music locally to transport you out of the everyday visit the Millgate Arts Centre on Wednesday, March 2 at 7.30pm.
Book online www.millgateartscentre.co.uk, by phone on 01457 874644 (booking fee of £1.80) or in person at the theatre box office. Single tickets cost £16 while school children and music students pay £5.
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