Philharmonic Chamber Music Concert

»Mozart wrote the A major Quartet K. 464 at the peak of his instrumental output. At the composer’s invitation the grand master of the genre, Joseph Haydn, had the opportunity to hear the piece one winter’s evening in Vienna, and uttered the following compliment to Mozart’s father Leopold: »I do declare in front of the Lord that your son is the greatest composer I have encountered in person«. Another admirer of the quartet was Beethoven, as proved by a copy of the finale in his handwriting. His Sextet for Two Horns & String Quartet highlights the pair of horns as the main instruments. As a young man, Beethoven learned the horn himself under the tutelage of his publisher-to-be Nikolaus Simrock. In 1884 the Russian composer Alexander Glazunov wrote a piece for string quartet and horn entitled ›Idyll‹ at the young age of 19: a wonderful, expressive and fairly short work. Thanks to his success as a composer and teacher, and to his career as a conductor and pianist, Glazunov advanced to become a figure of international standing at an early age.«

(Piotr Pujanek)