Romantic Vienna: A Schubertiad
8pm, Saturday 12th July 2008
Oxford University Church

The City of Oxford Choir is delighted to announce that the string quartet Fourte will also be taking part in Saturday's concert.  Fourte was founded in 2001, and its members are outstanding principal players from the UK's leading orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, the Academy of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, the English Chamber Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. Besides accompanying Mozart's Missa Brevis in Bb, they will also be playing one of Haydn's best loved and most charming string quartets: "The Lark"

More great music has been composed in Vienna than in any other city in the world. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Schubert, two Johann Strausses, Mahler, Schönberg: all spent substantial periods of their lives living and working in Vienna. In the 1820s, groups of friends gathered in large private houses for enlightening experiences. Food and drink were served; there was conversation, readings of poetry and in particular performances of music. The young composer Franz Schubert was a darling of these occasions, and many of this prolific composer’s songs were premiered at such a Schubertiad.

The City of Oxford Choir recreates such an entertainment through the part songs of Schubert, together with – then as now – those of other composers of Vienna: Haydn, Mozart and Brahms.