In their LCMS and Kings Place debut, the newly formed Albion Quartet presents the first of four concerts across 2017–19, each one linking British and European music via a particular theme. This first programme considers the concept of ‘folk’ music as absorbed into the string quartet. Schubert’s chamber music is infused with folk idioms – from dances, lullabies, hurdy-gurdies to street songs.

Elizabeth Maconchy’s enormous contribution to British quartet literature – fourteen in all – distil the folk idioms of early 20th-century British music and of her teacher Vaughan Williams through the filter of Janáček, Bartók, Pijper and other European modernists, in the most concentrated and compelling way. Dvořák’s enshrinement of his native Bohemian folk tradition is nowhere clearer than in his 10th quartet, which includes one of his finest dumkas, as well as a skočná. Later concerts in this series will consider the themes of ‘hymns’, ‘war’ and ‘mentors’.