Tippett Quartet draws inspiration from past and future for Sidmouth recital

Like its namesake – Sir Michael Tippett – the Tippett Quartet, which brings to a close Sidmouth Music’s season, draws inspiration from the past and future alike.

The four players are committed to playing mainstream repertoire and contemporary works, and have been described by The Times as “bold and innovative… their intent is serious, execution compelling, ensemble immaculate”. They made their Wigmore Hall debut the same year they formed.

The players have since performed at the BBC Proms, and festivals at Cheltenham, Chichester, Dartington, Lincoln and at the Three Choirs.

They have also performed at King’s Place, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Bridgewater Hall, The Sage, Gateshead and regularly return to Wigmore Hall. They frequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and abroad.

For their Sidmouth recital, in the Manor Pavilion Theatre at 7:30pm on Saturday, March 12, their programme will be drawing from the mainstream end of their broad repertoire.

They open with a late quartet from Haydn, the Sunrise, opus 76/4. This set of six quartets was commissioned by Count Erd�dy in Vienna and drew on Haydn’s increased assurance in his composition.

The name stems from the opening ethereal theme, reminiscent of dawn when the sun gradually casts its light upon the earth.

The second piece, written in 1829, is an early work from a 20-year-old Mendelssohn, his quartet no 1 in E flat.

Although numbered as his first, this quartet was written two years after what became known as quartet no 2, because of the sequence in which they were published. Even so both had been preceded by an even earlier work, from age 14, which was not published until after his death.

The recital will end with one of Schubert’s great later quartets, no 14 in D minor, Death and the Maiden, so called because the slow second movement is a set of variations on the harmonic theme of his song of the same name composed in 1817.

He began this quartet in 1824, but it was not published until seven years later in 1831 - three years after his death.

Tickets for the concert, at �12.00, are available from the Theatre box office (01395) 514413, or Paragon Books, Sidmouth, Lesley’s Stationery, Budleigh Salterton, Stagestruck, Ottery St Mary, Honiton TIC and Opus Music in Exeter’s Guildhall Shopping Centre. (Euterpe)