Stealing, Borrowing, Remembering 4

The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, London, NW1 7NL

• Mozart: Adagio and Fugue K. 546
• Webern: Quartet op. 28
• Stravinsky: Double Canon
• L. Berkeley: In Memoriam Igor Stravinsky
• Haydn: Quartet op. 20 no. 5

Tickets: £10 / £8 online and on the door, inc. tea/coffee

Over the course of five concerts, join the Berkeley Ensemble as they explore how two twentieth-century masters, Igor Stravinsky and Lennox Berkeley, responded to the music of the past, re-working it in their own compositions before ultimately becoming historical figures themselves for the generation that followed.

In the forth concert, fugues and canons for string quartet predominate. Despite utilizing Schoenberg’s methods, Stravinsky preferred the cool, contrapuntal logic of Schoenberg’s pupil, Anton Webern; his Double Canon recalls Webern in its icy beauty. Haydn’s quartet steals a fugue theme from Handel’s Messiah as the basis for its own concluding fugue; Mozart would use the same in his later Requiem.

2 – 5pm
Join Michael Berkeley, one of the UK’s foremost composers, and members of the ensemble as they work with young composers on new works for string quartet following the concert. Entry is free to participants and observers.

Composers are invited to submit works for string quartet of up to eight minutes, preferably accompanied by a recording of either a live performance or electronic realization, to john@berkeleyensemble.co.uk by Friday 25 January 2013