Ahead of their Melbourne Festival performances, The London Haydn Quartet’s Michael Gurevich shares his Haydn obsession.

This year’s Melbourne Festival sees the conclusion of a three year celebration of the string quartets of Joseph Haydn. To mark this, a full cycle of all Haydn’s quartets (nearly 70 in total) will be performed during this year’s Festival, including performances by one of the world’s greatest authorities on this extraordinary repertoire, the London Haydn Quartet.

Online editor Maxim Boon spoke to the quartet’s 2nd violinist Michael Gurevich about a career spent dedicated to this wonderfully crafted catalouge of repertoire.

Michael Gurevich

What makes Haydn’s quartets so important in the canon of that medium?

Haydn made the string quartet what it is, even though people love to argue about who wrote the first string quartet! While there were definitely examples of composers writing for the familiar string quartet line-up, Haydn clearly decided that it was a medium that he was going to be able to do incredible things with. Without him it simply wouldn’t have become what it is today, which is one of the absolute standards...