In the & Beyond series, we take one composer at a time as our starting point, looking at their significance in life, their relationships with composers in subsequent periods and how they inspired one another. The evening will feature a scintillating programme of intense ensemble playing, overseen and put together by our violinist Joseph Puglia, who has chosen Carlo Gesualdo (1566- 1613) as our point of departure.

Gesualdo’s hyper-expressive music was unusual for his time, and he employed compositional methods which we do not see again until Wagner and Schoenberg. He is best known for killing his wife after catching her with her lover. Both the manner in which he composed and this grisly fact form the basis of this programme. After the murder, Gesualdo’s music is full of texts representing emotional extremes – love, guilt and death, in particular. The works featuring on this programme share the same emotions as a common theme – with a main focus on violence and war.