August 13, 2026
Shanghai Concert Hall | Quatuor Van Kuijk's Masterworks Goes On Sale, Eleven Movements and Not One Complete Work
Quatuor Van Kuijk plays the Shanghai Concert Hall main hall on 16 October, ¥100–380, on sale from 13 August. The programme is eleven single movements by eleven composers, and that is worth explaining before you buy.
By 小魔女·Edited by 马勒迷
Quatuor Van Kuijk play the main hall of the Shanghai Concert Hall at 7.30pm on 16 October. Tickets are ¥100, 180, 280 and 380, on sale from 13 August. There is 12% off the ¥180 tier and above until midnight on 15 August, then a 10% two-ticket bundle until 9 October.
The ensemble is worth hearing. At the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition they took first prize along with the Beethoven and Haydn prizes, then went into the BBC New Generation Artists scheme. Their complete Mendelssohn quartet cycle is recorded for Alpha Classics. Adrien Boisseau joins as guest violist for this Asian tour; he is not the permanent player.
The programme is eleven movements
The format needs stating before you buy. Masterworks plays no complete work. It takes one movement from each of eleven composers and runs them in rough chronological order across two halves. Before the interval, the first movement of Mozart's "Dissonance", the third of Brahms Op. 51 No. 2, the second of the Debussy, the slow movement of Haydn Op. 76 No. 5, and the first of Mendelssohn Op. 80. After it, Smetana's "From My Life", the pizzicato movement from Bartók's Fourth, the Lento from Dvořák's "American", the third movement of Shostakovich's Third, and finally the Molto adagio from Beethoven's second "Razumovsky" and the finale of Schumann Op. 41 No. 1.
The gain is real. You hear three hundred years of quartet writing in one sitting, from classical balance to twentieth-century modernism, and you need no preparation at all to follow it. For a first quartet concert this is a friendly way in.
The cost is real too. What gives the quartet its weight as a form is the way a whole work argues itself out. A slow movement lifted away from the tension before it and the resolution after it easily reduces to atmosphere. The Lento from the "American", the Molto adagio from Op. 59 No. 2 and the Largo from Haydn's Op. 76 No. 5 are each the most immediately beautiful stretch of their work, and each the most dependent on context. Three of them side by side in one evening will feel closer to a compilation than to three complete experiences.
So our advice is to come and meet the ensemble rather than to meet the works. If you want to hear how these four players shape a sound and breathe together, this will do it. If you want to know Beethoven's "Razumovsky", find their complete performance or the recording instead.
Tickets are mini-program only
This concert is currently listed only in the venue's WeChat mini-program, 上海音乐厅. It does not appear in the website's ticketing API, and our page says so. Doors open 60 minutes before. No children under 1.2m, and no refunds or exchanges.