Informal afternoon string quartet concert by the CBSO's Beamish Quartet pairing Beethoven's Fourth Quartet with Sally Beamish's 'Opus California' and Aulin's String Quartet No.1.
Colette Overdijk, Georgia Hannant, Amy Thomas, and Arthur Boutillier are playing three string quartets at the CBSO Centre on Friday 27 November, starting at 1:00pm. It's part of the Centre Stage series, an informal afternoon strand programmed and introduced by the orchestra's own musicians, designed to bring audiences closer to their artistry in an intimate setting. The series was started by the CBSO's Director of Artistic Planning, Catherine Arlidge, when she was still playing in the second violins, and the repertoire is chosen personally by the musicians involved. Over the course of the wider programme, that's meant wind and percussion trios alongside string quartets by Dvorak, Brahms and Shostakovich.
This particular afternoon pairs Beethoven's Fourth Quartet—wild, passionate and surprisingly playful—with Sally Beamish's Opus California, which she describes as her imagined portrait of Beethoven in California. The third piece is a romantic discovery from Sweden, Aulin's String Quartet No.1. The whole thing runs for about an hour with no interval, so it's a fairly compact session that fits into a lunch break or a free Friday afternoon.
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It's part of the CBSO's 2026-27 season under Music Director Kazuki Yamada, and it also feeds into the orchestra's 2027 Beethoven festivities. Tickets are £12, with reduced prices for students, under-18s and benefit recipients. It starts at 1:00pm at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham.
