String music in Leamington and Warwick to liven up winter evenings

Fretwork, accompanied by lutanist Elizabeth Kenny, are presenting a programme of works by John Dowland at St Mary’s church in Warwick on Tuesday.

Dowland was born a year before Shakespeare and, because of the universal appeal of his music, he was likely to have been better known throughout Europe than the Bard.

Fretwork, who are players Asako Morikawa, Reiko Ichise, Liam Byrne, Richard Tunnicliffe and Richard Boothby, are gearing up for their debut at the BBC Proms this autumn, when they will be joined by tenor Ian Bostridge, while they are also playing five concerts in Spain, more Dowland with Elizabeth Kenny in ten cities in North America in November and a performance in Gdansk in Poland at the end of the year.

The Warwick concert next week, organised by Leamington Music, will be followed by a performance by the Carducci String Quartet at the Pump Room in Leamington next Friday (January 25).

The programme will include Haydn’s Quartet in G minor Op 74 No 3 - nicknamed The Rider, Britten’s Quartet No 1 and the only Quartet written by Debussy.

Made up of Matthew Denton and Michelle Fleming on violins, Eoin Schmidt-Martin on viola and Emma Denton on cello, the quartet’s members are unusually two married couples.

On the day after the concert, they are visiting Kenilworth School to conduct workshops as part of Leamington Music’s education programme.

Both the Fretwork and Carducci Quartet concerts start at 7.30pm. For tickets to both these and other Leamington Music events, call the Bridge House Theatre box office on 776438 or go online.