The culmination of the Villiers’ residency in Oxford, thanks to the Faculty of Music with support from the Radcliffe Trust, is tonight’s glorious concert of two much-loved works interspersed with a lesser-known quartet by Hubert Parry. Mendelssohn’s op. 80 – with its dramatic opening movement and searing Adagio – was composed as an homage to his sister Fanny, who had recently died.

Mendelssohn himself then died just two months after finishing the work. Beethoven’s ‘Razumovsky’ quartets, of which there are three, were a commission from the Russian ambassador to Vienna, and as such utilize Russian themes. (In fact the Russian folk-song quoted in the work in this concert was also later used by Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.) Parry’s third string quartet is lesser-known for good reason: it went missing among the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, finally to be re-discovered among Finzi’s papers in 1992.

There will be interval drinks, and a post-concert reception at a nearby location; do join us to thank the members of the Villiers Quartet for their engaging Oxford concerts, and to wish them luck in their future career.

‘… marvellously sympathetic, well-prepared performances from the Villiers Quartet …’ Gramophone Magazine

Interval drinks at a nearby location.

www.musicatoxford.com/concerts/villiers2/