Philharmonia Chamber Players: Beethoven and Shaw

Enjoy two emotion-packed string quartets in this free early evening concert with members of the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw was inspired to write Entr’acte after listening to a Haydn string quartet. In its haunting harmonies and textures, traces of the classical string quartet seem to echo across the centuries.

Beethoven, too, took Haydn’s string quartets as a starting point, then made the genre his own. The pizzicato (plucked) passages in the first movement of his Op 74 quartet, which led to its ‘Harp’ nickname, link it to Shaw’s work. And the two share an expressive intensity that makes them perfect companions in this programme, chosen by four friends and colleagues from the Philharmonia.