Matangi Quartet – Matangi Moments: Mozartiade
On Friday 16 October 2026, the Matangi Quartet performs a chamber music concert at the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague. The programme 'Mozartiade' focuses on the lightness and playfulness that make Mozart's music so distinctive, and on how that music continued to inspire composers long after his time.
Mozart is celebrated for his melodic elegance and his ability to conceal complexity behind seemingly effortless sound. That quality lies at the heart of this programme, which opens with the String Quartet No. 17 in B♭, KV 458. The nickname 'The Hunt' refers to the galloping opening bars and horn-call-like motifs that immediately transport you to the Viennese countryside. The quartet is one of six Mozart dedicated to his great model Haydn, combining flowing melodic lines with a dialogue between the four voices that never loses its grip.
Michael Nyman and Mozart at Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague
Halfway through the evening, the focus shifts to the twentieth century. British composer Michael Nyman built his 1984 work In Re Don Giovanni on just a handful of bars from Mozart's opera of the same name. By repeating, shifting and driving those fragments to a hypnotic pace, Nyman demonstrates what happens when an 18th-century motif is passed through a modernist filter. The result is at once a homage and a radical reinvention.
Matangi Quartet in The Hague
The Matangi Quartet is known for its broad repertoire and the precision with which it constructs programmes. Placing Mozart and Nyman side by side is no coincidence: the two composers are separated by nearly two centuries, yet both ask how you tell a large story with limited material. The concert concludes with Mozart's Quintet in G minor, a work that answers that question in its own compelling way. The Nieuwe Kerk offers an acoustic and visual setting that gives the music space to breathe.
