The Kuss Quartet

Performers

Kuss Quartet

Programme

Mozart

String Quartet in C K465 ‘Dissonance’

Tchaikovsky

• From Album pour enfants Op. 39 (arr. for string quartet):
  • Chanson russe
  • Mélodie antique française
  • La poupée malade
  • Chanson populaire (Kamarinskaya)
• String Quartet No. 1 in D Op. 11

Stravinsky

• Three Pieces for string quartet
• Concertino for string quartet

About this concert

Conventional wisdom stands to be challenged by the Kuss Quartet, whose interpretations repeatedly sweep away the empty gestures of tradition to reveal familiar works in fresh light. Its iconoclastic approach to programme building likewise demolishes artificial boundaries and recital rituals, an artistic strategy potently underlined in the imaginative blend of works concocted for the ensemble’s latest Wigmore Hall concert.

Four arrangements of pieces from Tchaikovsky’s Schumannesque piano album for children help bind together Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ Quartet with Stravinsky’s enigmatic Three Pieces and dashing Concertino and Tchaikovsky’s melancholic First String Quartet.

‘…provocative, driving, impassioned playing… the purity of sound was almost heavenly’ Houston Chronicle