‘It’s quartet Disney World!’ Getting to grips with world’s biggest string quartet festival

This year’s String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam saw big names and rising stars play 113 works from Beethoven to Larcher, plus masterclasses, a DJ – and free biscuits. Can you have too much of a good thing?

Imagine a small island where, for an entire week, you’re in the company of some of the world’s finest classical musicians. They play almost continuously from 9.30am until bedtime. You’re one of more than 13,500 audience members. Oh, and one crucial detail: everything you hear is a string quartet.

Maybe it sounds like paradise? Or alternatively the setting for a dystopian arthouse film – a Lord of the Flies adaptation, perhaps, with classical music fanatics rather than schoolboys? Either way, imagine no more: this place is real. Minutes from the rail mega-interchange of Amsterdam Centraal, the glass-walled, ultra-modern Muziekgebouw sits at one end of an artificial dock in the city’s busy harbour. There’s water on three sides of the building and the only way in or out is by one of the sleek metal bridges. This is the home of the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, the world’s biggest string quartet festival.