Albion Quartet

Haydn String Quartet, Op.76 No.3, ‘Emperor’ 26′ Dvorak Quartet in E minor, B19 35′, Quartet in E, Op.80 27′ Haydn’s quartet has perhaps the best-known national anthem of all at its heart but is so much more than a famous tune – it’s an exhilarating tour-de-force that demolishes conventions and toys with the listener at every turn. Two of Dvorak’s surprisingly unheralded quartets revel in a similarly radical approach. The youthful E minor quartet is cast within an astonishingly inventive single- movement mould whilst his later work confounds our expectations with an atmosphere of aching nostalgia and undercurrents of Slavic melancholy that belies its major key.