CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT: HEATH QUARTET

Join the Heath Quartet for a chamber music concert featuring masterpieces by Haydn and Beethoven alongside music by Dobrinka Tabakova, who was recently composer-in-residence at Truro Cathedral, and a set of lively dances from the 1920s, by the Prague-born composer Erwin Schulhoff.

The Heath Quartet formed in 2002 at the Royal Northern College of Music. There were selected for representation by YCAT, awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Special Ensemble Scholarship and in 2012 won the Ensemble Prize at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where they are now regular visitors. In 2016 they won the Gramophone Chamber Award for their recording of the complete string quartets of Sir Michael Tippett, and in May 2013 became the first ensemble in fifteen years to win the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artists Award.

Their award-winning release of the Tippett was followed by two discs recorded for the Harmonia Mundi/PIAS label featuring Tchaikovsky’s first and third quartets (November 2016) and the complete Bartók quartets (June 2017), the latter of which won the 2017 Limelight Chamber Music Award and was nominated for the 2018 Gramophone Chamber Music Award – both projects were part-funded by the Quartet’s Borletti-Buitoni Trust Special Ensemble Scholarship 2011.

The 2021/22 season sees the quartet perform around the UK while continuing their longstanding relationship with the Wigmore Hall, to include the European Premiere of Helen Grime’s String Quartet No. 2. This piece will also feature in their Boulez Saal Berlin residency, where the quartet will also reunite with Jörg Widmann for a performance of his Clarinet Quintet. Other highlights include their Barcelona debut in Palau de la Musica Catalana with soprano Carolyn Sampson and performances at both the Mecklenberg Vorpommern spring and summer festivals. The quartet also look forward to their forthcoming release on Signum Records with Carolyn Sampson featuring works by Berg, Webern and Schoenberg.

Programme
Haydn: String Quartet in B-flat major, Op.50, No.1 (24’)

Schulhoff: ‘Czech Folk-Dance’, ‘Tango’ and ‘Tarantella’, from Five Pieces for String Quartet (10’)

Dobrinka Tabakova: Highland Pastorale (2019) (5’)

Interval

Beethoven: String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op.131 (38’)

Heath Quartet:

Sara Wolstenholme (violin)
Marije Johnston (violin)
Gary Pomeroy (viola)
Christopher Murray (cello)