Britten Oboe Quartet at Jordan’s Music Club

Elgar: Andante and Allegro
Britten: Phantasy Quartet Op. 2
Mozart: Flute Quartet in C major, K171
Thea Musgrave: Cantilena
Danish Trad: Sønderho Bridal Trilogy
Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F major, K370

We welcome back Nicholas Daniel and his string ensemble, the Britten Oboe Quartet. Nicholas Daniel founded the quartet together with his colleagues and co-principals of the award-winning Britten Sinfonia. They aim to bring music of the highest quality to audiences and to explore lesser-known works, both British and from abroad, as well as standard classics such as Mozart’s oboe quartet. This concert fulfils their aim magnificently.

We are treated to both the oboe and a flute quartet (played on the oboe) by Mozart, together with a fascinating collection of both well and lesser-known pieces. Elgar’s Andante and Allegro was an early work written in 1878 and only recently published from the manuscript kept at the British Library. Britten’s Phantasy Quartet is another early work written while he was still a student and his first work to be heard publicly. His harmonic language was not yet fully developed but is still striking in its inventiveness and originality. Thea Musgrave’s Cantilena, commissioned in 2008, is a short lyrical piece where an outsider (the oboe) joins the group (a string trio) and adds to their dialogue. The penultimate piece is a set of three traditional Danish wedding folk tunes dating back hundreds of years, from a tiny village called Sønderho in the western part of Denmark.