This concert is currently on advance sale to Friends of Wigmore Hall. For Friends booking dates, please visit our Priority Booking page. For information on becoming a Friend, please visit our Friends page.

If you are a Friend of Wigmore Hall and it is your time to book, please sign in at the top of the page.

General sale for this concert will open at 10.00am on Tuesday 21 January.

Britten’s Second String Quartet was first performed at Wigmore Hall in 1945 to mark the 250th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s death. The Doric String Quartet recalls the work’s historic première, at which Britten’s composition shared the bill with Fantasias by Purcell. ‘Henry Purcell was the last important international figure of English music,’ observed Britten at the time, to which many added that he was the next.