Biography

Alex Redington - violin
Ying Xue - violin
Hélène Clément - viola
John Myerscough - cello

Formed in 1988, the Doric String Quartet ranks as one of the leading quartets of its generation. First-prize winner at the 2008 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan and second-prize winner at the Premio Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in Italy, the Quartet has been heard on five continents, appears in leading concert halls throughout Europe, and is a regular visitor to Wigmore Hall in London. The Quartet tours annually to the United States and made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2017.  Since 2010 the Quartet has recorded exclusively for Chandos Records. Its 2017 release of Schubert’s Quartettsatz and G-Major Quartet was named Editor’s Choice by Gramophone magazine and nominated for a 2017 Gramophone Award. The Quartet’s ongoing commitment to Haydn has so far seen the release of the complete Op. 20, 33, 64, and 76 quartets. The Doric Quartet’s most recent release of Mozart’s Prussian Quartets (Nos. 21-23) was awarded Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, as well as being praised in BBC Music magazine for its “vivid and insightful interpretations.” 2019 saw the release of the Doric’s benchmark recording of the complete Britten quartets, a release praised in BBC Music magazine for its “extraordinary affinity” with Britten’s music. The Quartet’s violist, Hélène Clément, plays a Guissani viola from 1843, previously owned by Britten, who was himself an accomplished violist. 3rd LMMC appearance.

 https://doricstringquartet.com/

Notes

Schumann’s three string quartets were written in the incredibly short period of just five weeks in 1842. Five years later, the composer expressed the opinion that these quartets represented the best works of his earlier period; Mendelssohn thought the same. Biographer John Daverio makes the following observation about these quartets: “[Composers] had to fashion contrapuntally integrated structures in which every member of the ensemble had something of substance to contribute. At the same time, they were expected to demonstrate a keen awareness of tradition without overtly copying their predecessors. Both aspects of this ideal were aptly realized in the three quartets of Schumann’s Op. 41.”

Beethoven’s first essays in the medium of the string quartet were the six of Op. 18, written between 1798 and 1800. The nickname of No. 2, Komplimentierungs (Compliments), is seldom encountered today, though in earlier times it was apparently used to signify its genial temperament, formal restraint and courtly grace (at least in the first two movements). Perhaps the opening gesture does suggest the entrance of a guest at a nobleman’s palace, making his bow with a flourish of the hat, which in turn is followed by a gracious response from his host. The English writer Sir Donald Francis Tovey called this the “gentlest” of the Op. 18 quartets.

For the serious listener prepared to abandon worldly cares and concerns for thirty or forty minutes in search of a transcendent musical experience, there are no more rewarding works than Beethoven’s late quartets. Op. 131 (1825-1826), in its vast range of emotions, forms, tonalities, tempos and textures, bears comparison with a Mahler symphony. (Mahler himself even thought it should be played by a full orchestra.) Of its seven movements, only the first and last are in C-sharp minor, acting as giant pillars upon which rests the huge central movement, which is in turn flanked by two shorter movements on each side. There are virtually no pauses between movements, and there are more than thirty changes of tempo in a complete performance. Yet the quartet stands as a model of a perfectly integrated organic whole moving inexorably towards its conclusion. The work is further characterized throughout by a kaleidoscope of contrasts, many of them extreme: high and low range, fast and slow tempos, soft and loud dynamics, dense and spare textures, polyphonic and chordal writing. Beethoven himself regarded this quartet as his greatest, an opinion sustained by many others across the years to the present day.

Robert Markow