Musica Nova

Opening the concert is the Symphony in D by Arriaga, an early 19th Century Spanish Basque composer nicknamed “The Spanish Mozart”. Like Mozart, this talented composer was a child prodigy and an accomplished composer by his early death, at the age of just 19.

The theme of talented young composers continues with Mendelssohn’s sublime Octet, written in 1825 when he was just 16 years old. The popular work is for a double string quartet and, according to the composer, was “my favourite of all my compositions”, “I had a most wonderful time in the writing of it!”