The Glasshouse

Haydn Quartet in F minor, Op.20, No.5
Janáček Quartet No.2, ‘Intimate Letters’
Smetana Quartet No.1 in E minor ‘From my life’

Established in Hungary in 1975, now based in the USA and long recognised as one of the great chamber ensembles of our time, the Takács Quartet performs favourite works by masters of the genre from three centuries, celebrating 140 years of the Newcastle Chamber Music Society.

Haydn’s F minor quartet is the most emotionally intense of the group of six quartets Op.20 which established the string quartet as we know it.  Janáček’s second quartet describes in music his intense feelings for Kamila Stösslová, a younger, married woman who inspired his best-known music.  Equally personal is Smetana’s quartet describing his life from the love and dancing of his youth to the deafness of his final years.

‘From Haydn’s chirruping birds to knotty Mendelssohn, the quartet shows unlimited musical imagination….. What endures about the Takács Quartet, year after year, is how equally the four players carry the music.’ Guardian 2019

Supported by grants from the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Community Foundation Tyne and Wear and Northumberland and the Catherine Cookson Trust.