The Greatest Forgotten String Quartet: Have Your Say
How often have you returned to a forgotten book or piece of music only to re-discover or even uncover unrealised joys?
Vexations 840 has begun a worldwide hunt for The Hunt for the Greatest Forgotten String Quartet and is inviting lovers of chamber music to have their say in a vote and help programme a concert of the most popular and possibly no-longer-forgotten string quartets!
The winning item will be revealed and performed at The Townsville Festival of Chamber Music in August, in a joint concert by the Goldner String Quartet and the New Zealand String Quartet. The concert will be made up entirely of unfairly neglected string quartets drawn from your votes.
Voting closes on the 9th June, 2014. Click here to vote and you can also hear recordings of these neglected masterpieces before voting for your favourite quartet.
….and to whet your appetite, here are a few little known facts from The Hunt for the Greatest Forgotten String Quartet:
“Composers throughout history have written some of their most important music in their string quartets. Did you know:
• that Saint-Saens wrote 2 gorgeous quartets?
• that Donizetti, these days known for his operas, wrote 18 of them!
• what Vaughan Williams’ quartets sound like, are they anything like The Lark Ascending?
• that Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father of the USA, wrote a string quartet?
• that the only major composer since Beethoven not to have written a string quartet is
Richard Wagner?
• that there’s one beautiful quartet by Beethoven that is virtually never heard?”
