SYNOPSIS

Concordia Quartet brings you music that is bathed in sunshine, but has lurking shadows. Bask in the sunshine of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, in Sally Beamish’s String Quartet No. 2, ‘Opus California’, and savour Haydn’s playful String Quartet Op. 33 No. 5.

Outwardly, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 is a celebration of the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany, but written over nineteen days under Stalin’s shadow, in an increasingly authoritarian and anti-Semitic Soviet regime, Shostakovich adds subtle expressions of revulsion beneath the veneer of confidence.

PROGRAMME

Joseph Haydn
String Quartet op.33/5

Sally Beamish
String Quartet No.2 Opus California

Dmitri Shostakovich
String Quartet No.2