Winner of prestigious awards at the 2018 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition and Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, the Munich-based Goldmund Quartet is one of the most dynamic young chamber groups around. Formed just over a decade ago, the ensemble has already displayed its energy, wit and insights in well-received concerts across the globe.

For their International Festival debut, the Goldmund players perform one of the great pillars of the chamber music repertoire. Schubert knew he was dying when he wrote his Death and the Maiden, yet he offsets its sense of deep tragedy with effortless, song-like melody. The Quartet takes its unusual title from an earlier song by Schubert, whose melody he reuses in his second movement. It is an unforgettable, deeply cathartic experience, as though rediscovering hope after staring unflinchingly at despair.

The Goldmunds begin their concert with Haydn’s exceptionally beautiful String Quartet in B minor, in which the composer encourages his string foursome to new heights of drama and rhetoric in one of the most fiendishly challenging works he composed for the medium.

Supported by
James and Isobel Stretton