About astraeus
The Astreus Quintet was formed after a bar room discussion between Steve and Jeremy following one of Steve’s performances at the Sussex Musicians’ Club in November 2007. We decided it would be a good thing to play Mozart’s K452 Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, and thought there must be some more repertoire for the same ensemble to justify a regular group. If there wasn’t, we resolved to get arranging. Since then we have performed at the Sussex Musicians’ Club, St Mary’s Bramber and the Brighton Festival Fringe. We’ve also added a flute.
As well as the Mozart quintet, our repertoire includes Beethoven’s quintet Op 16, an arrangement of Mozart’s G minor Quartet K475 , the Nielsen wind quintet, Poulenc’s Sextuor and works by Milhaud, Ibert and Piazzolla. The name of the group has a classical origin. Astreus was the god of dusk and husband of Eos (known by the Romans as Aurora), the goddess of the dawn. His original Greek name, Astraios (Ἀστραῖος), translates as “dawn of the stars” ( from astra “stars” and eos “dawn”), the time when the stars come out, or simply dusk. Together as nightfall and daybreak they produced many children including the winds and the planets. So the Quintet is named after the father of the winds. We have no known connection with the American airline of the same name.
