Isla String Quartet

We’re delighted to be wecoming the Isla String Quartet to Hexham. Formed in 2023 and championed by the Tillett Trusts’s DEBUT programme for young musicians of outstanding talent, the quartet are already making waves in the music world.

The quartet’s career is one that is full of promise and prizes won. They were welcomed on to the Britten Pears Young Artists programme at Aldeburgh in 2023-24 and in June 2025, they were invited back there to play with the Doric Quartet.  In 2024, they performed Mozart’s first string quintet af the Calne Festival with the great composer and viola player, Brett Dean.  

The Isla String Quartet’s programme this afternoon includes a Haydn quartet which led to their winning first prize in a Royal Academy of Music competition. They also play a quartet Mozart wrote for the cello-playing king of Prussia, Debussy’s one and only quartet (which counted Ravel as one of its many admirers) and the fourth of Bartók’s six famous quartets. Four great quartets for a Sunday afternoon!

Programme

Mozart - String Quartet no. 21 in D major, K575

Debussy - String Quartet in G minor, op. 10

Haydn - String Quartet in D major, op. 20, no. 4

Bartók - String Quartet no. 4, Sz. 91