We are delighted to welcome one of the world’s great string quartets, the Quatuor Ébène, to this year’s festival, where they will also lead masterclasses for young ensembles. They pay tribute to “these enchanted isles” in Britten’s brilliant and precocious portraits of three schoolfriends, and in Thomas Adès’ idyllic O Albion, with its homage to Elgar’s Nimrod (and behind that masterpiece, late Beethoven). Haydn’s glorious ‘Sunrise’ almost anticipates late Beethoven in its moving adagio, alongside one of Haydn’s most exhilarating finales. Finally Beethoven himself contributes his wild, epic, and “forever contemporary” Great Fugue.

Haydn ‘Sunrise’ quartet op.76 no.4 | Britten Three divertimenti | Adès O Albion, from Arcadiana op.12 | Beethoven Grosse Fuge op.133

This concert is generously supported by James Malcomson.

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Every year the Oxford Chamber Music Festival brings together some of the most exciting classical musicians in Europe to live and play together for a week. Creative sparks fly as the musicians change musical partners and master the widest variety of sound-worlds.

This year’s festival celebrates the infinite variety of music from the British Isles, across four centuries and four nations: from Celtic folk influences to English pastoral; from Renaissance fantasy to Radiohead; from the internationally-celebrated Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Britten to hidden treasures and exciting finds by composers you may not even have heard of – yet!