#Sibelius string quartets review full

The Moderato is barely a few bars long before an impassioned theme begins on the first violin.

#Sibelius string quartets review full

The Sibelius is an ambitious, full length sonata-form movement. Therefore we heard two contemporary Nordic composers, both born in 1865, writing music for string quartet in the same period of their careers. First up was his Moderato and Allegro appassionato (1888-89), and Nielsen, his First String Quartet (1887-88). This performance by the Sacconi Quartet of Sibelius's ' Voces intimae' was the finest I have ever heard. The Sacconis led up to it with an account of Mozart’s Hoffmeister Quartet in which their fine balance and near flawless ensemble provided the bedrock for a graceful yet rhythmically vital interpretation and a performance of Mendelssohn’s great F minor Quartet whose fury and ferocity set the scene for what was to come. The overall impact of the work and its performance was profound, an unforgettable example of the power of art to convey something terrible through an expression that is paradoxically in itself beautiful.ĭove’s piece took up the entire second half. The tenor line – here presented by Mark Padmore with immaculate artistry, and a technique so finely honed that one scarcely noticed it – amplifies the eloquent candour of the originals. The string writing moves back and forth between painful intensity and frozen introspection, with many subtle shades in between. Dove has succeeded in setting them to music that allows their plainness and understatement to register to maximum effect while maintaining a striking character of its own.

Safar and McManus have distilled elements of the tragic Syrian experience into words that are simple, direct and without any hint of rhetoric or sensation. Scored for tenor and string quartet, it sets English translations by Anne-Marie McManus of text from the Syrian poet Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky, or Death by Stabs of Sorrow. Jonathan Dove’s new work, which received its first London performance in this 15th anniversary concert by the Sacconi Quartet, is an unusual and timely one. Assuming you’re not a completist, that’s reason enough to snap up this disc.įiona Maddocks, The Observer, September 2016 Both have been widely recorded, but not together. The playing is fresh and pliable, each work illuminating the other. The works here, typically, are carefully matched: Mendelssohn wrote his mighty A minor quartet Op 13 in response to Beethoven’s in A minor, Op 132.

They have a festival, work with a wide range of musicians and actors and have their own label. String quartets stand out for different reasons, from quality of sound (the Takács or, in the past, the Alban Berg or Amadeus) to adventurous repertoire (Kronos or Arditti or JACK) to versatility, among whom the Sacconi Quartet, currently celebrating their 15th anniversary this year, are front-runners. Recur for string quartet and harp was a gem of a piece, sparkling with plucked textures, its four-note earworm of a tune cast in endlessly inventive new contexts, funky and foot-tapping yet also full of piquant emotion, and it got a crisp, bright, thoroughly assured premiere performance.ĭAVID KETTLE, The Scotsman, November 2016 All change, though, for Saturday’s lunchtime concert from the UK-based Sacconi Quartet and harpist Ruth Wall (*****), which included the world premiere of a sound-commissioned, bracingly energetic new work from UK post-minimalist Graham Fitkin. The rest of the disc is lighter but always with that trademark Dove economy: the Sacconis sound relaxed and bubbly in the 2001 quartet Out of Time and pianist Charles Owen joins for the Piano Quintet, intense and light-filled. The performance does, too: clear, focused playing from the Sacconi Quartet and lucid, unswerving narrative from tenor Mark Padmore. The words are direct and the music respects that. It doesn’t sensationalise, get maudlin, moralise or politicise. The beauty of the piece, for tenor and string quartet, is its restraint.