Allegri Quartet 60th birthday concert

The current Allegri Quartet
(Vanessa Lucas-Smith, Rafael Todes, Dorothea Vogel, Ofer Falk, )
in 1950's mood celebrating the quartet's 60 anniversary

The Allegri Quartet is 60 this year and to celebrate the quartet is at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday 6 July 2014, with a concert of string quartets and quintets by Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich and Thuille. The concert will include the world premiere of a newly discovered movement for string quartet by Ludwig Thuille, who was a friend and contemporary of Richard Strauss. Thuille died in 1907 and is now better known as the teacher of Bloch and Walter C Spalding.

The group is Britain's longest running chamber ensemble; personnel has, of course, changed over the years. Recent highlights from the quartet's current line-up (Ofer Falk, Rafael Todes, Dorothea Vogel and Vanessa Lucas-Smith) include their complete Beethoven cycle at Kings Place (2010-12), a recording in 2013 of Beethoven's Op. 18 Nos. 2,3 and 4 on the Vivat label and several world premiere commissions including Anthony Payne, Alec Roth and Matthew Taylor. Last December they gave the world premiere of Haydn's Quartet in D minor opus 103, completed by William Drabkin, and earlier this year collaborated with the Indian sarod player Wajahat Khan for an East-meets-West recital at Kings Place.