BARBICAN QUARTET,
PURCELL, RAVEL, BEETHOVEN

After last year’s success the  Barbican Quartet is coming back to the Festival. They owe their name to the Barbican Centre in London, where the young quartet gave its ‘foundation concert’ in 2015. The four musicians won first prize in the important 71st ARD contest, besides earning awards in various other prestigious competitions.
Their programme starts with Henry Purcell’s three Fantasie, followed by Ravel’s well-known Quartetto per archi in fa maggiore, one of the French composer’s most intense pieces. Dedicated to Faurè, it was premiered in Paris in 1904 and was an extremely demanding test-piece for Ravel, who was only 27 then.
Ten years after the other masterpiece by his countryman Debussy, Ravel’s piece marks one of the peaks of string quartet music, and is an outstanding unicum in his repertoire.
In the second half of the concert the Barbican Quartet proposes an equally famous item: Beethoven’s op. 59 no. 1 “Razumowski”. Composed in Beethoven’s phase of artistic maturity, (1805-6), it is one of three quartets dedicated to the Russian ambassador in Vienna.  It is surprisingly large for its day, and is laid out in sonata form, boasting various novel features marking the composer’s fortunate creative moment.