105. Young Musicians’ Platform

The Young Musicians Platform is a showcase for the five masterclass quartets, who have all had an intense week of classes and performances. The Hill Quartet, already on the verge of a professional career, perform the first of Haydn’s light-spirited Op.33 quartets that he boasted to Mozart were written in a new and unique style. This delicious quartet ends with one of Haydn’s more spectacular presto Finales. Allora Quartet repeat their performance of Dvořák’s A flat Quartet that turned out to be his final quartet, infused with his love of his homeland and its traditional dances, made all the more precious by his long absence in America. Aradia Quartet re-visit Smetana, whose dramatic life story is set out in his From my Life Quartet including a truly devastating slow movement that mourns the death of his wife and three daughters. Leggiadro have picked Borodin’s Second Quartet that he dedicated to his wife after twenty years of an obviously happy marriage to judge by the justly famous Nocturne with its soaring cello melody.