Haydn is where our story begins
NOVO Quartet is an outstanding young ensemble from Denmark on their first visit to Bantry. They have already released a well-regarded recording of Shostakovich and Nielsen and have been awarded a prestigious teaching post at the RNCM in Manchester. They open their visit with two tremendous quartets by Haydn.
Haydn was an extraordinary man, who spent most of his life in the service of a music-loving Prince for whom he would organize over 200 concerts a year, mostly of music he had written himself. He was on a continual journey of discovery, creating new musical worlds for future composers to explore. NOVO Quartet will play two of his vast selection of string quartets. He wrote the G major quartet, one of a set of six, in his late forties, in a new more popular style designed to widen the appeal of his new artform. Haydn, although a deeply serious man, loved a good joke and he begins the quartet with a perfect four-note cadence, a phrase that belongs at the end of a movement not the beginning. He uses this delightful eccentricity to book-end the movement and to provide moments of reflection amidst the energy generated by the joyful main themes.
The F major quartet was part of a commission from one of the Viennese princely music-lovers for a set of six quartets from both Haydn and Beethoven. This was the moment when Haydn handed the baton over to Beethoven, for he only completed two of the set and stopped in the middle of the third one. Whereas Beethoven triumphantly completed his famous Op.18 set, two of which we will hear in the next Coffee Concert. The F major is in fact the very last quartet that Haydn completed. And it has everything you could wish for – originality, virtuosity and easy accessibility.
