The second of two compelling programmes curated for this Festival by the Kreutzer Quartet, featuring a world premiere by David Matthews and music by Priaulx Rainier, Michael Finnissy and Mozart.

Kreutzer Quartet present a morning concert in the beautiful Orford Church: a fitting venue for a programme reflecting on “endings and beginnings”.

The programme opens with Quartet for Strings (1939) by Rainier, who also has a strong connection with Britten and wrote many vocal works for Peter Pears. Michael Finnissy’s piece is a contemporary continuation of the Art of Fugue, an incomplete piece of work by Bach written in the last decade of his life. It is followed by the 17th quartet by David Matthews, who worked as an assistant to Benjamin Britten between 1966 and 1970. Finally, Mozart’s K.590 is his last string quartet – famous for its strange dissonance in the last movement which invokes a premonition of an unknown future.