Saturday 14 September 2024 7.30pm
£20.00 | 18 and under free
Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York

Ben Hancox, Magnus Johnson violins
Gary Pomeroy, Simone van der Giessen viola
Marie Bitlloch, Tim Lowe cello
Andrew Brownell piano

Claude Debussy Prélude to the Cantata La Damoiselle élue (The Blessed Damozel) (arranged by John Lenehan)
Gabriel Fauré String Quartet in E minor, Op. 121
Johannes Brahms Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25

Debussy read Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem The Blessed Damozel (1850) and had an idea to compose a short cantata based on it. The synopsis is simple. “From the heights of paradise, leaning on a golden barrier, a young girl laments the absence of her lover. On Earth, the latter believes he feels her presence.” Debussy shows us his wonderful gift for fleeting moments of sensuality.

This fleeting moment then hands over to two of the great masterpieces of all chamber music. Fauré’s string quartet was his last work. He was ill and deaf, so this other-worldy, ethereal music wells up from the depth of his silent world, sharing with us his serenity as he faces the end of life.

Brahms’s epic Piano Quartet is one of the first works of Brahms’s unique flowering liberated from the shadow of Beethoven and covers a musical canvass with a clarity and newness that had not been heard before.

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