Doric String Quartet MENDELSSOHN String Quartets Vol. One

Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire.

Mendelssohn wrote and published these three quartets at very different stages in his life and they therefore outline the complete trajectory of his creative output.

The early Op. 12, also called No. 1, was composed in London and includes many musical allusions to Beethoven, dead only a few years before its composition. These subtly contrast with Mendelssohn’s genially flowing energy.

While Op. 44 No. 3, which incorporates many deft variations, developments, and combinations, follows an extended honeymoon tour and Mendelssohn’s twenty-ninth birthday, Op. 80 emerged from a bout of helpless depression after the sudden death of Mendelssohn’s older sister and confidante, Fanny. Mendelssohn described this quartet as a Requiem, and the nervous agitation often found in his music here bursts forth with full force. Resignation, agitation, and nostalgia shape the work, the almost shocking finality of which may be said to prefigure Mendelssohn’s own death only six months later.

Doric String Quartet / Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Peter Oundjian JOHN ADAMS Naive and Sentimental Music - Absolute Jest

As part of his final year as Music Director and following a two-season celebration of the Orchestra’s 125th anniversary, Peter Oundjian and the RSNO here present their second recording of music by John Adams, with the exceptional participation of the Doric String Quartet.

Written for a large orchestra including six percussionists, keyboard sampler, and amplified steel-string guitar, Naive and Sentimental Music is a sweepingly symphonic masterpiece, full of contrasts and clashes. It reflects the dichotomy between ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’ poetry as analysed by Friedrich Schiller in his 1795 essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, as well as the ‘bipolar’ musical life of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the dedicatee of this piece, who conducted the first performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999.

Absolute Jest is a large-scale scherzo for amplified string quartet and orchestra, heavily inspired by the music of Beethoven, which Adams has always deeply admired. The quartet of soloists, a late addition to the score, emphasises the echoes of Beethoven’s music (mainly his string quartets) and   facilitates a ‘hyperspace rate’ of virtuosity, which the Doric String Quartet here perfectly demonstrates.

Jennifer Pike / Tom Poster / Doric String Quartet CHAUSSON Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet - String Quartet

Chausson’s premature death in 1899 in a cycling accident left his String Quartet unfinished. Two movements were complete, with a third needing the helping hand of Vincent d’Indy. It was clearly intended as a four-movement work and is conceived on a grand scale. The Doric make the best possible case for the piece, even where it’s less than polished. This is very much a product of its time, sitting on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, with all the unease that that suggests; it has its hints of Wagner but also echoes of Debussy. The third movement is the weakest, without a particularly pronounced character, which is ironically not helped by d’Indy’s very definite ending, which rounds it off as if it were a true finale rather than the penultimate movement.

The Concert is another matter, however. Chausson’s musical inventiveness amply fills its statuesque dimensions and it never outstays its welcome. There are plenty of opportunities for Jennifer Pike to display her sinuous, tender tone, while Tom Poster reminds us yet again why he’s so highly regarded as a chamber musician: sample from around 4'10" in the finale, where he makes light and highly nuanced work of the filigree that forms a shadowy backdrop to the strings. In some performances it can feel as if the quartet is too small a force to convey the grandeur of Chausson’s vision, but not here, with the Doric revelling in the luxuriant textures. Though I retain a soft spot for the note of disquiet that Graffin brings to the Grave in his recording with the Chilingirian, their reading as a whole doesn’t have the same cumulative impact as the Doric et al. And there’s no contest in the finale, which in the new version has a thrilling one-in-a-bar propulsion. A real front-runner for the Concert, and the most convincing of advocates for the more problematic String Quartet. (Harriet Smith / Gramophone)

Doric String Quartet SCHUBERT String Quartet in G major - String Quartet in C minor

Alongside its highly praised Haydn series, the Doric String Quartet continues its Schubert journey with this second volume of quartets, which precipitates us into the fraught world of late Schubert. Both composers will be central in the Quartet’s recitals next year, to take place in the highest-profile international venues, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and London’s Wigmore Hall.
Franz Schubert returned to composing string quartets in the 1820s, after four years of focusing on songs which were beginning to gain him wider recognition.
His late chamber compositions reveal probably his most characteristic music, full of deep intimacy and profound ambivalence. The ‘Quartettsatz’ (Quartet Movement) presents a turbulent, norm-breaking first movement. Only a fragment survives of a serene Andante in A flat, and nothing for any scherzo or finale. If the 'Rosamunde' and 'Death and the Maiden' (CHAN10737) are the most frequently heard of the quartets of Schubert, his last completed one – in G major – certainly remains his most uncompromising in its vastness, and perhaps his most prophetic of the musical future. (Presto Classical)

Doric String Quartet / Allison Bell BRETT DEAN Epitaphs - String Quartet No. 1 - String Quartet No. 2

It is impossible to talk about the chamber music of the Australian composer Brett Dean without mentioning that he was principal viola of the Berlin Philharmonic. Inevitably he understands string textures from the inside, with compelling results. The excellent Doric Quartet rise to the challenges of these elegiac works. Eclipse (String Quartet No 1), particularly timely, conjures the despair of the boat people rescued from the Indian Ocean by the Norwegian freighter Tampa in 2001, then denied admission to Australia. The three movements flicker between light and dark, turbulence and calm. Five Epitaphs offer moving portraits of five dead friends, including the conductor Richard Hickox. The Quartet No 2, ”And once I played Ophelia” (2013), has a part, too, for soprano (Allison Bell) which began as the seeds of an unwritten Hamlet opera. Tense, tender and original, it’s a tough but rewarding listen. (The Guardian)