Intimate Chamber Music: String Quintets by PENTA

The Origin of a Genre

Joseph's younger brother, Michael Haydn, was the first composer to write high-quality music for the so-called viola quintet. Michael's good friend Mozart was inspired and wrote six of them as well. This marked the birth of the string quintet with its typical sonorous sound quality.

PENTA puts the colourful string quintets of Michael Haydn in the spotlight, side by side with an overture by Franz Schubert.

More than thirty years after Michael, the 14-year-old Schubert composed his Overture in C minor. It seems like the opening movement of a fictional opera, with a slow, dramatic introduction followed by a faster movement of a symphonic character. Schubert knew the music of the Haydn brothers well. From his early youth, he played the violin in the school orchestra, and on the music stands, there was often music by the 'Haydns'.