This year’s festival will be opened by an ensemble that many people regard as the world’s pre-eminent string quartet. In 2005 their recordings of the Late Beethoven Quartets won Disc of the Year and Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine, a Gramophone Award and a Japanese Record Academy Award. They will play the monumental Op 130 quartet as Beethoven intended us to hear it, with the Grosse Fugue finale, preceded by one of his best loved quartets. This concert will be a marvellous start to our fortnight and is sure to sell out extremely quickly.

 

"The Takács have the ability to make you believe that there's no other possible way the music should go, and the strength to overturn preconceptions that comes only with the greatest performers." Gramophone Magazine