We mark the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth with one of his greatest works, the Octet in E flat major, op. 20, written in 1825 at the age of sixteen. It is remarkable for the richness of its scoring, using a double string quartet, and the freshness and assurance of its musical language. The light and ethereal scherzo, supposedly inspired by a section of Goethe’s Faust, became famous in the nineteenth century, and was orchestrated by Mendelssohn for his first symphony.

Spohr’s fine double quartet no. 3, op. 87, was written in 1832-3 and uses the same instruments but in a different way, with the first quartet accompanied by the second in the manner of a concerto. Haydn’s unfinished string quartet, op. 103, was his last instrumental work, composed in 1803.

The Eroica Quartet makes a welcome return to the Festival after its very successful concert in 2004. It is renowned for its radical interpretations of some of the best-known music of the nineteenth-century, passionately believing that greater freedom of expression can be found in the use of the instruments and perfromance styles of the past.

Its recordings of Mendelssohn’s string quartets have received huge critical acclaim: ‘performances of exhilarating freshness and verve’ – Daily Telegraph. Members of the Aiso Quartet belong to such distinguished ensembles as the London Haydn Quartet and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and teach at Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Music. Most of the members of both quartets play in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.