Book Tickets

Verdi’s only score for instruments alone was written in a hotel room in Naples in 1873 and never intended for public consumption. The composer’s String Quartet has all the songful melodiousness, charming wit and fluent elegance of his operas – combined with the seriousness of a musician who knew his Haydn and Beethoven. At the other end of his life, the pre-teenage Rossini wrote a set of string sonatas that combine the youthful ardour of Mendelssohn with something altogether more saucy and Italian. Join our outstanding string players for this rare chance to hear intimate chamber music for strings by Italian composers famous for operas on a grand scale.