Ensemble 360

Mozart Quartet for Oboe and Strings in F K370
Finzi Interlude for Oboe and String Quartet in A minor Op.21
Sally Beamish St. Andrew’s Bones for violin, horn and piano
Brahms Quartet for Piano and Strings in C minor Op.60

The spirited Oboe Quartet was written by Mozart for Friedrich Ramm, who was by all accounts an extraordinary oboist. It features subtle virtuosity and irresistible melodies from start to finish.

Last year Sally Beamish wrote a string quartet for the Elias Quartet, which was commissioned by, and premiered at, the BBC Proms, and for which she won a Royal Philharmonic Society award this year. Here Ensemble 360 performs her piece St. Andrew’s Bones, which draws on a thirteenth-century hymn, ninth-century Scottish bronze bells and the medieval horn, creating a stark and poignant echo across the centuries.

Brahms’s stormy Piano Quartet is full of tragedy and despair, and spans twenty years of his compositional career; he began writing it in 1855-56, and didn’t return to it until 1873, completing it in 1875.

Post-concert Q&A