Four days in the church at Fenmere with the doors shut against the weather, and the second volume of the Beethoven cycle is done. Nos. 4, 5 and 6, out in the spring.
Volume three — and with it the end of a three-year project — is booked for next autumn.
Ann Tessier's Sightlines, which we premiered at Ashcroft Hall last year, goes out with us this season to Winterthur, Durham and Manchester.
Ann writes about the piece: "It began as a study in what four people can see of each other while they play. The quartet kept telling me it was harder than it looked, which I took as encouragement."
We are delighted to be continuing as Quartet in Residence at Ashcroft Hall for a further three seasons, with three concerts a year, an open rehearsal each season and the schools programme that has grown alongside it.
The Ryedale concert came off the calendar three days before, when the hall's roof repairs overran. Rather than lose the day we took the programme to the village school down the road and played it twice, to a hundred and ten children who had never seen a string quartet.
It is rescheduled for next season, roof permitting.