We open this programme focussing on the string octet with an appetiser from the young Shostakovich. His Two Pieces contrast a sombre, elegiac Prelude with the biting satire of a kaleidoscopic Scherzo.

Mendelssohn’s Octet was a birthday present for his violin teacher. With memorable melodies and dynamic exchanges between the players, it has delighted audiences and performers for two hundred years since its first performance in the Mendelssohn family home.

Receiving its first public outing is Manchester-based composer Nicholas Simpson’s Octet. By turns lyrical, funny, touching, sinister and impassioned, Simpson’s Octet is a companion piece to the Mendelssohn masterwork he has loved and admired since childhood.