As part of our mentoring scheme this season, the Gildas quartet will be joined on the platform by one of their promising young students from Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. This development of our season’s theme – The Ties between Pupil & Teacher – has been made possible by a most generous anonymous donation, for which many thanks.

In the second half of their programme they play Britten’s 3rd String Quartet. Reading about the history of this work I learned that a one-time student of Britten’s, David Matthews whose 80th birthday celebrations we have been recognising this season, played through the score of this work privately to the composer. Alongside his brother Colin Matthews, they played a piano duet reduction of the new score to Benjamin Britten in December 1975. Apparently this was the first time the great British composer had ever heard this latest work realised. Sadly he was to die a year later in December 1976 and the quartet proved to be his final major work. This wonderful act of playing through the score for Britten must have been a most satisfying way to repay the debt of all that David Matthews had learned from his extraordinary teacher.

Richard Sisson (Programme Planner)