This year’s Quartet Week features six acclaimed ensembles who will explore a wide-ranging selection of works from the rich quartet repertoire in the Pierre Boulez Saal’s intimate setting. With celebrated masterpieces of the genre performed side by side with contemporary and recent pieces, the program reveals surprising connections and echoes across different styles and eras.

Bookended by classics of the quartet repertoire by Haydn and Schubert, the Signum Quartett’s program prominently features two South African works from the 20th and 21st centuries: with her 1939 Quartet for Strings, Priaulx Rainier—who later lived in London as a violinist and composer—achieved her international breakthrough. Some 60 years later, her compatriot Matthijs van Dijk was awarded the composition prize named in Rainier’s honor. The Signum Quartett premiered his (rage) rage against the in 2018.