Guildhall Chamber Orchestra

Witnessing a Brentano String Quartet performance of Haydn’s Quartet op 77 inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw to write Entr’acte in 2011. Subtitled ‘a minuet and trio’, the piece fascinatingly weaves eighteenth-century style with 21st-century colours and techniques.

Prokofiev’s self-named “symphony in the Classical style” has become one of the Russian composer’s most popular works. Also modelled in the style of Haydn this witty and elegant work is, like the opening piece in this concert, full of harmonic twists which remind the listener of its true century of creation.

The evening ends with music from the ballet Pulcinella – a masterpiece of Neo-Classicism by Prokofiev’s compatriot Igor Stravinsky, premiered exactly 100 years ago by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.