The AHE commence their season with two wonderful quartets that morph effortlessly from
the lofty to the lowbrow.

Then Fanny Mendelssohn’s quartet, apparently the first ever composed by a woman, offers an elegant, if far from ladylike, riposte.

Beethoven never set Shakespeare, even in translation, but his instrumental works often
cryptically allude to his favourite plays. When the mind’s eye of his lead violinist conjured a lovers’ farewell scenario to the wrenching despair of Op. 18 No. 1’s Adagio, Beethoven confessed its secret link to Romeo and Juliet’s final scene. 

Haydn seemed never to be afforded that option, with public and publishers leaping to assign programmatic nicknames to his works. Whether the hazy, soft-focused opening to his Sunrise quartet is an actual depiction of dawn matters little: the first two of Op. 76 No. 4 are among the most rhapsodically beautiful of all quartet movements.