Piatti String Quartet

As part of our initiative to explore The Ties between Pupil & Teacher in this series of concerts, Luton Music has received a most generous anonymous donation. This money is to help support projects in which we celebrate in particular the talent of young performers. For this concert we therefore invited the Piatti Quartet to mentor four of their talented students to join them on the platform for a performance of Mendelssohn’s dazzling Octet. (It’s also perhaps worth remembering that Felix Mendelssohn wrote this astonishing work when he was only 16, a similar age to these remarkable young players!)

In the programme we also hear Shostakovich’s 10th String Quartet which he dedicated to Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, a close friend and pupil. The two composers had a mutually influential relationship, often fuelled by a degree of healthy rivalry. In 1964, Shostakovich confessed: ‘Weinberg has written nine quartets and with the last of them he has overtaken me, since at the time I only had eight. I therefore set myself the challenge of catching up and overtaking Weinberg, which I have now done.’ What a fine outcome to this wonderful relationship between Pupil and Teacher!

Richard Sisson (Programme Planner)