Sunday 18^th January 2026

3.00 pm

Runtime: 120 minutes

Colyer-Fergusson Hall

The Gulbenkian Arts Centre

University of Kent

Tamesis String Quartet

Phoebe Rousochatzaki - violin

Matteo Cimatti - violin

Emily Clark- viola

Dan Brandon - cello

Biographies

Formed in 2024 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Tamesis Quartet won the prestigious CAVATINA intercollegiate chamber music competition in May 2025 - held  annually at Wigmore Hall - after being nominated to represent the School. The Quartet has enjoyed performances in a variety of performance settings in Guildhall and beyond, including regular coaching with professors David Waterman, Matthew Jones, Simon Rowland-Jones and Ursula Smith, and masterclasses with eminent visiting professors such as Asbjørn Nørgaard, Mark Steinberg and Gary Pomeroy. 

Hailing from varied cultural backgrounds, each member brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, including individual studies with renowned pedagogues such as Janine Jansen, David Takeno, Martin Outram and Joseph Puglia, and have collectively studied in chamber festivals such as Musique à Flaine, Virtuoso e Bel Canto and Sion Festival, as well as collaborating regularly with highly sought-after orchestras such as Royal Birmingham Ballet Sinfonia, London Symphony Orchestras, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Residentie Orchestra. They look forward to upcoming performances in London, Kent, South-West England and Switzerland and continuing their studies at Guildhall.

Programme

Benjamin Britten            Three Divertimenti          

1913 – 1976

Felix Mendelssohn           String Quartet no. 2, op. 13

1809 - 1847

Ludwig van Beethoven     String Quartet op. 59, no. 1

1770 - 1827

Programme Notes

This programme brings together three works that each explore musical identity in different ways — with Mendelssohn and Beethoven building their quartets around pre-existing  melodies, while Britten stands apart through character and texture rather than thematic  quotation.

Britten’s Three Divertimenti open the programme with sharp contrasts of colour and gesture rather than a unifying tune. These early pieces show Britten experimenting with character pieces — punchy, theatrical, rhythmically playful — where personality is driven by texture and atmosphere rather than a single melody. This makes Britten the “outlier” of the programme, offering a modern, non-melodic starting point.

In Mendelssohn’s Second Quartet, melody becomes the driving force. The whole work is built around the little Lied he composed — “Ist es wahr?” — a personal and intimate tune that gives the quartet its emotional unity. It appears transformed throughout the piece, acting almost like a private message woven into the music. This strong melodic anchor contrasts beautifully with Britten’s more fragmentary, character-based writing.

Beethoven’s Op. 59 No.1 last movement also revolves around an external melody: the Russian folk song included at the request of Count Razumovsky. While Beethoven develops it far beyond its original simplicity, the folk tune still provides a clear thematic identity for the finale, giving the work its own rooted, folkloric flavour. Here the borrowed melody becomes part of Beethoven’s expansive, architectural approach to quartet writing.

Taken together, Mendelssohn and Beethoven offer two very different uses of a “given” tune — one private and introspective, the other public and folkloric — while Britten provides a contrasting modern perspective where character, rhythm and sonority replace the idea of a central theme.

The result is a programme that moves from colour → melody → structure, tracing how three composers use or deliberately avoid thematic unity to define their musical voice.

Biographies and Programme Notes provided by Phoebe Rousochatzaki

Tickets from

Gulbenkian Box Office

Full: £25

Students & Under 25s: FREE