Quartet in two acts

There is no string quartet without Haydn – it's a cliché, but also a fact. His opuses, especially those from the 1770s and 1780s, established the language of chamber music, which for the following centuries became a reference point for Mozart, Beethoven, Bartók, and Lutosławski. The Quartet in C major, Op. 20 No. 2, belongs to the so-called Sun Quartets – a cycle of six quartets in which Haydn abandoned the dominance of the first violin in favor of a fuller dialogue among the four voices. Their nickname – the Sun Quartets – comes from an engraving of the sun on the cover of the first edition from the 1770s.

But the actual discovery of the evening might be the name of Witold Maliszewski (1873-1939). Today almost forgotten, he was once a prominent figure – a student of Rimsky-Korsakov, teacher of Lutosławski, the first director of the conservatory in Odessa, and after returning to Poland, a promoter of musical culture in Warsaw. His Quartet in F major, Op. 2 No. 1, completed around 1904, is a work immersed in late Romantic harmony, with a clear classical structure and great attention to sound. But the actual discovery of the evening might be the name of Witold Maliszewski (1873-1939).

The combination of Haydn and Maliszewski is no coincidence – it's a juxtaposition of the source and the response, of the form and the later voice. It is performed by the Meccore String Quartet – a group that has long been among the top Polish quartets. Winners of competitions in Wigmore Hall and Weimar, students of masters from the Camerata and Alban Berg Quartets, they play with an energy and focus that can be heard even in the quietest of lines.

We invite you to an evening of chamber music in a classical format, but with a repertoire that rarely appears on stage!

Haydn's String Quartet in C major, Op. 20, performed by the Meccore String Quartet: