Affinity Quartet: Haydn, Mendelssohn & Laing

Affinity Quartet opens their program with Haydn’s 31st String Quartet, the Op.33 No.1 in B minor. Following a break of ten years from composing string quartets, Haydn describes his Op.33 set as having a ‘new and special’ style. The key of B minor itself is unusual – a choice that signals the exploratory and unconventional direction of Haydn’s quartet writing in the 1780s.

Mendelssohn’s sixth and final string quartet was composed just two months before his death in 1847. In this 30 minute work, subtitled Requiem for Fanny, Mendelssohn turns to the intimacy of string quartet writing to grapple with the sudden death of his only sister and closest confidante, producing one of his most musically incisive and arresting works.

Australian composer and violist Matt Laing, describes his new work for Affinity Quartet as ‘an abstract still life in perpetual motion, where even the smallest, stillest things have a hyperactive inner life’.

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