Little Missenden Festival 2008

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Event 6 2008

Allegri Quartet

Sunday October 12th, 3.00pm

Little Missenden Church

Tickets £17, £12.50, £8

ALLEGRI QUARTET:  Ofer Falk violin, Rafael Todes violin, Dorothea Vogel viola, Pal Banda cello

The Allegri is one of our most accomplished and long-standing quartets, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2004.  Past members include chamber music luminaries like William Pleeth and Patrick Ireland, and the current line-up maintains the high-quality tradition. They’re currently working through a complete Beethoven cycle, weaving his quartets into programmes of contemporary works over four seasons.

“The shimmer and grace and intelligence of this ensemble is riveting” (Independent on Sunday)

Allegri Quartet website

Robert Simpson Society website

Hyperion Records Robert Simpson page

Interview with Matthew Taylor about Robert Simpson

Royal Academy page on Matthew Taylor

Join us after the concert for AFTERNOON TEA (kindly provided by the Friends of the Little Missenden Festival), and a chance to chat with Matthew Taylor and the Allegri.  

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In Little Missenden Village School

opposite the church, to the right

Little Missenden Festival 2008

Beethoven’s towering C sharp minor string quartet (reputedly the composer’s own favourite) is a breathtaking experience, from the matchless beauty of the slow opening fugue through the magical inventiveness of the Andante variations to the defiant power of the concluding Allegro.  As Phillip Weller put it, “Op131 is, after all, one of the richest of all musical works in its range of ideas and expression and in the way it enlarges forever, at one blow, the very concept of what a string quartet can be… No musical world can be quite complete without op131”

Robert Simpson’s fine quartets are shamefully neglected.  He was (as Classic CD put it) “a beacon of musical honesty, cultivating a style that satisfies both the intellect and the heart”. The Allegri will play his short second quartet, which already shows (in Matthew Taylor’s words) “a clear-headed mastery and formal originality, defining their author as one of the century’s great quartet writers”.  It starts with a Haydnesque tune, becomes more turbulent, and ends in darkness.

This will be the first performance of Matthew Taylor’s 6th quartet (a Festival commission). He was a friend of Robert Simpson, whose music he champions. “He is a fresh and exciting voice among younger British composers; his music, which combines traditional forms with today’s language, has won him admirers in every age-group” (Giles Easterbrook).  The work reflects Matthew’s “fascination in developing new structures from the older classical masters”.

Matthew Taylor commission funded by

RVW Trust and the Festival friends

Concert sponsored by Kenneth Walker