Villiers Quartet with Lucy Cox

In a musical journey from earliest dawn to deepest night, the Villiers Quartet, renowned as champions of British music, share their latest discovery in chamber music by Ailsa Dixon (1932-2017), recently recorded for the Resonus Classics label.

Programme

Haydn Sunrise Quartet
Dixon The lost Scherzo (Concert Premiere)
Dixon Sohrab and Rustum
Dixon Nocturnal Scherzo
Dixon The Spirit of Love: 3 songs for soprano and quartet

Haydn’s much-loved Sunrise Quartet opens the programme, before the concert premiere of Dixon’s sunniest work, a charming, mercurial Scherzo written in 1955, believed to be lost until the manuscript came to light a few years ago.

Beginning at dawn and ending in ‘frosty starlight’, Ailsa Dixon’s atmospheric quartet Sohrab and Rustum was inspired by Matthew Arnold’s poem about the tragic encounter between an estranged father and son, on opposite sides of a battle between the Tartar and Persian armies. As we progress to nightfall with Dixon’s Nocturnal Scherzo, the programme concludes with her songs for soprano and string quartet, The Spirit of Love, sung by Lucy Cox, including settings of Housman’s From far, from eve and morning and Bourdillon’s The night has a thousand eyes. An exploration of love’s transcendence, it was described by an audience member at its last performance as ‘a stunning find…rarely have I heard a new piece which has moved me so deeply’.

The Villiers Quartet Founded in 2011, the Villiers Quartet has established a reputation as outstanding interpreters and champions of British music. Hailed for their extraordinary ‘commitment and virtuosity’ (The Sunday Times) they are the quartet in residence at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford.

Lucy Cox (soprano) read music at Oxford University before winning a scholarship for postgraduate studies at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. A former Brighton Early Music Festival Young Artist, she has appeared as a soloist in concert venues from London’s Wigmore Hall to the Konzerthaus in Vienna.