Cycle George Onslow

About the Event

In a music world centred on opera, Onslow (1784‐1853) devoted himself almost exclusively to instrumental music. A portrait of a master of the string quartet and quintet, who came to be known as ‘le Beethoven français’.

Onslow belonged to that visionary French school of composers who detected very early on the useful harmonic contribution of German music.

The cycle of concerts presented in Venice will enable audiences to hear the many different facets of this composer’s work: not only the string quartets and quintets (Quatuor Diotima, Quatuor Ardeo / Dubost, Quatuor Manfred / Phillips, Quatuor Ruggieri), but also the piano trios (Van Baerle Trio, Trio Arcadis) and the less frequently heard violin sonata (Nicolas Dautricourt and Momo Kodama). His rarest piano music, for four hands, will be played by Lidija and Sanja Bizjak, and one of his cello sonatas, a work that truly deserves a place in the repertoire, will be performed by Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel.