Doric String Quartet bring their cutting edge to Musica Viva tour
The Doric String Quartet have been showing Australian audiences their cutting edge approach, combining balance, intelligence and a strong sense of adventure.
Wentworth Courier
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The British group have a loyal and large fan base in London where their recitals at Wigmore Hall are much sought after hot tickets. Their albums over two decades have garnered praise and awards from the critics and although they have visited Australia before, notably for a Musica Viva Festival four years ago, they are just finishing their first tour for Musica Viva.
Playing two programs, both featuring one of their much acclaimed forays into the works of Haydn alongside a premiere performance of Australian composer Brett Dean’s third quartet, Hidden Agendas, written for them, they come with a new second violinist Ying Xue, who joined them last year.
Lead violin Alex Redington and cellist John Myerscough have been in the group since its formation in 1998, and French violist Helene Clement joined them in 2013.
Ying, born in China and based in Boston, merges seamlessly into the line-up, as was apparent from the opening bars of Haydn’s The Joke Quartet which started this program.
Redington’s keen sense of structure and feel for shifting dynamic and mood ensured that the elegance and wit of Haydn’s music came to the fore in the comic sliding passages in the scherzo and the delightful ending where the melody breaks down and restarts.
SCREAMING
Dean has recently moved to the UK and his latest quartet was composed to reflect the bitterly divisive Brexit debate in that country. Its five short movements are confronting, often fierce and malevolent or icily ironic. Introducing the first movement, Hubris, Myerscough told the audience: “Imagine we’re all screaming at you demanding to be heard.”
The dissonances of this movement give way to glassy harmonics in the third movement, Retreat. For the fourth movement — Self-Censorship — Dean, a virtuoso violist, asks the musicians to clean their strings and play with bows which haven’t been rubbed in rosin, producing a whispery sound.
As they gradually swap back to their normal bows the volume rises and in the final movement we’re back with full force for the strident On-Message, although the listener is unconvinced that it is really leading anywhere, much like the debate itself.
“Perhaps the politicians should listen to Hidden Agendas and learn something from the conversations within a string quartet,” Myserscough said.
Myerscough’s yearning cello led them into the beautiful andante and the delicate, magical slow dance at its end.
To finish this program the Dorics gave a spellbinding performance of Schubert’s last quartet, the No. 15 in G major. This work has been overshadowed by the popular Rosamund and Death and the Maiden quartets that preceded it, but the ensemble has championed it and many consider it to be his greatest quartet.
The rapidly repeated tremolando bowing passages of the opening movement shimmer and give an ominous feeling of dramas to come, all beautifully handled by Redington and his team.
Myerscough’s yearning cello led them into the beautiful andante and the delicate, magical slow dance at its end.
This 50-minute work, with its shifting dynamics and harmonic transformations weaves a spell in the hands of a crack outfit like the Dorics and left this listener wondering why we don’t hear it played more often.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: Doric String Quartet
● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place
● WHEN: Monday, June 24