Portsmouth Chamber Music Series – Beethoven & Brahms String Quartets

String Quartet No.1 are playing at Portsmouth Guildhall on Monday 12 October, their Portsmouth debut. They're the most recent winners of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet competition, where their playing was described as 'technically superb and emotionally compelling'. They follow in the footsteps of past winners like the Leonkoro Quartet, Quartet Van Kuijk and the Takacs Quartet.

The programme brings together three very different works. They open with Beethoven's String Quartet in D Op.18 No.3, a bright, early piece that runs about 25 minutes. Then comes Arcadiana, the first string quartet by Thomas Adès, which takes up another 20 minutes. Adès is one of the younger names on the bill — The New York Times called him 'one of the most accomplished and complete musicians of his generation' — and Arcadiana draws on Mozart's The Magic Flute, the painter Poussin and Greek mythology. The evening closes with Brahms's String Quartet No.1 in C minor Op.13, the longest of the three at 35 minutes.

Between them, the three pieces run just under an hour and a half, so it's a full night of music rather than a short set. It's also part of the Portsmouth Chamber Music Series, and if you're planning on catching more than one, there's a 20% discount when you book all six concerts in the series. Under-14s have to be accompanied by an adult.

The concert starts at 7:30pm, and tickets are £13 to £23, which includes a 13% booking fee.