Philharmonia Chamber Players: Two Octets

Philharmonia Chamber Players are at the Royal Festival Hall on Thursday 25 March, with a free chamber concert that runs for about 45 minutes. It's the first half of a longer evening at the Southbank Centre, part of the Philharmonia Orchestra's Classical Season, and it's built around the string octet as a form.

The heart of the programme is Mendelssohn's String Octet in E flat, Op. 20. He wrote it when he was only 16, and it was groundbreaking for its symphonic shape—essentially a symphony for eight strings rather than a full orchestra. A century later, a teenage Shostakovich, aged 18, turned to the same ensemble to work through his own symphonic ambitions. He wrote Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11, which he split into two very different moods: a solemn, ominous Prelude written in mourning for a friend who died young, and an aggressive, confident Scherzo. Hearing them together lets you see how two composers, both writing as teenagers, used the same eight-player setup to reach for something much larger than a typical chamber group.

The ensemble for the night is drawn from the Philharmonia: violinists Fabrizio Falasca, Rebecca Chan, David López Ibáñez and Eunsley Park; violas Scott Dickinson and a second viola to be announced; and cellists Ella Rundle and Richard Birchall. The programme is just those two works—Shostakovich's Two Pieces and Mendelssohn's Octet—with no interval, so it's a straight run of about 45 to 50 minutes.

Because it's the first half of a double bill, you've got a choice of how to spend the rest of your evening. The second half starts at 7.30pm and is a separate ticketed programme: Philharmonia Featured Artist Sol Gabetta on Dvořák's Cello Concerto and Brahms's Symphony No. 2, conducted by Tugan Sokhiev. The chamber concert itself starts at 6pm and is free, though you'll still need a ticket to get in.