Chiaroscuro Quartet
Image credit: © Joss McKinley
This concert will be approximately 1 hour in duration, without an interval
Priority Booking for this concert will open to Friends of Wigmore Hall from Wednesday 14 January 2026 at 10.00am. For a full breakdown of booking dates, please visit our Priority Booking page.
General sale for this concert will open at 10.00am on Tuesday 27 January 2026.
The Chiaroscuro Quartet is named for the Italian term for light and shade in art, an apt description of their refined phrasing and ability to illuminate familiar works with their subtle period-instrument tones. The ensemble’s recording of Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 prompted the Observer to conclude that its ‘unadorned sound is a shock to the ears of the best, most arresting kind’. It begins this morning with the intricate musical argument of Beethoven’s final string quartet, considered by the composer Robert Simpson to contain ‘the most sensitively coloured quartet writing in existence’.