For anyone who doesn’t want to get up before 4:46 a.m. on this Sunday in June to watch the sunrise, our four KHO string players have rescheduled it for a more leisurely late-morning time. Yet many birds begin singing even before dawn. That is why, even before Joseph Haydn’s quartet—later nicknamed “Sunrise”—his cheerful, playful “Bird Quartet” will be performed, in which the calls of various winged inhabitants of fields, forests, and parks can be recognized in the grace notes, trills, and thirds. 

In between Haydn’s two well-known string quartets is a work by the highly talented Venetian violinist, singer, composer, and student of Tartini, Maddalena Sirmen (1745–1818). Throughout her career, she enjoyed numerous successes on concert tours through European musical capitals. Her six quartets, Op. 3, were published in Paris in 1769, just like Haydn’s six quartets, Op. 9, and, as is now recognized, also played a thoroughly significant role in the development of the genre.