Quatuor Ardeo

Mi-Sa Yang, violin
Sophie Williams, violin
Yuko Hara, viola
Joëlle Martinez, cello

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
String Quartet in G Major, KV 387
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
String Quartet in E Minor, op. 44/2
***
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet in E Minor, op. 59/2

Three works, three composers with distinctly different voices. Mozart's KV 387 is the first of his Haydn Quartets - his response to Haydn's op. 33, to which he dedicated the words: "Celebrated man and my dearest friend, accept here my children!". Mendelssohn's second quartet from the op. 44 trilogy was composed during his honeymoon and is renowned for its enchanting scherzo and its "Song Without Words".

After the intermission comes the second part of Beethoven's "Razumovsky Quartets" - dismissed by contemporaries as "the work of a madman", today recognized as groundbreaking for the genre.

Quatuor Ardeo was founded in 2001 at the Paris National Conservatory and ranks among the world's most sought-after string quartets. The four French musicians have won awards in Bordeaux, Moscow, and Melbourne and regularly perform on major concert stages and festivals throughout Europe.