classic.Esterhazy: quartet plus - OPUS 13

Opus13 (Winner of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition 2025)
Sonoko Miriam Welde, Violin
Edvard Erdal, Violin
Albin Uusijärvi, Viola
Daniel Thorell, Cello
Julian Bliss, Clarinet

Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in C major, Op. 76 No. 3 (“Emperor Quartet”)
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13
Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115

When a string quartet names itself after Felix Mendelssohn's A minor Quartet, Op. 13, the first work that the four of them played together as teenagers in Oslo, the youthful passion and ambitious spirit of this music transforms into the ensemble's motto. It is no surprise, then, that Opus13, winner of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition 2025, presents this very composition as the centerpiece of their performance in Eisenstadt. Haydn's venerable “Emperor Quartet,” with variations on the anthem “God Save Emperor,” pays tribute to the genius loci. And a wonderful late work by Haydn admirer Johannes Brahms embodies the festival title “quartetto plus”: the versatile English clarinetist Julian Bliss joins for Brahms’ Opus 115, in which the composer once again reveals his love for Hungarian music.