Still buzzing after its inaugural tour of the United States, Australian Haydn Ensemble has announced its 2024 program.

Among its highlights are five main-stage concerts exploring the music of Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Boccherini and their lesser-known contemporaries, a series of subscriber concerts in Sydney, Canberra and the NSW Southern Highlands, and individual performances throughout regional NSW.

AHE’s Skye McIntosh. Photo © Helen White

AHE begins its year with Love & Devotion, a program of three quartets, all notable for their emotional intensity: Haydn’s String Quartet No. 4 in D major; Mozart’s String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 12 in E minor.

An early biographer of Haydn’s placed the No. 4 in a sequence of works stemming from an “acute emotional crisis” (he even filled the evidence gap with the death of an invented lover). Mozart’s D minor quartet dates from a blissful period of his life just after his marriage to Constanze.

The 18-year-old Felix Mendelssohn dedicated his Opus 12 quartet to the girl next door (who responded...