The Carducci Quartet made a welcome return to Shrewsbury on Friday with a thrilling programme of musical and intellectual power. But not just this. Operatic Mozart, searing minimalism of Glass and a scintillating rendition of one of Shostakovich’s war quartets gave this fantastic foursome much to revel in – and the packed-out Maidment auditorium much to enjoy.
The opening Mozart quartet – no.19 in C K465 – began with the deliberative harmonic musings in its opening measures that provide its nickname the ‘Dissonance’, so shockingly avant garde in its time, here played with graceful control to more battered and more easily delighted 21st century ears. Once these clouds momentarily gathered they then almost as quickly dispersed and the Carducci deployed a wonderful sense of light and shade into the following two movements – spritely upper strings, plaintive lower, the sum of the parts brought into spectacular balance, particularly as they leaned as one into the delicious jamminess of the Andante Cantabile slow movement. The gloriously spiky Minuet and Trio embraced proto-Gothic spookiness with a big helping of fun, before we entered the magnificent ice palace that forms the final movement, rococo flourishes disappearing into rivulets of gleaming scalic virtuosity streaming down its sides from all four directions.
Philp Glass writes phenomenally well for strings – his violin concerto has long been a huge favourite, its loops played on loop. In fact, this Mishima quartet is on my Spotify playlist too, so I’m glad to be of service in helping the Carducci’s Naxos recording hit 21million plays. But attending to this live performance of its swellings and eddyings and pairings was quite something else. The articulation and dynamic control electrifying, the listening and musicianship, as layers unpeel and rhythmic currents cross, utterly mesmeric. True mastery here, and intensity worth the ticket price alone.
The second half was entirely given over to Shostakovich’s string quartet in A major, written in just 19 days in 1944. Violinist Matthew Denton introduced the piece as the giant of Russian modernism’s opportunity to march the quartet into the frontline – and there was plenty of muscular energy to their conception, from the angular rhythmic disposition of the first movement to the klezmer-inspired recitative slow movement, the violin melody soaring then settling, like a fly in the slow-setting amber of the harmonies of the lower strings. Its finale, a set of theme of variations, took no prisoners in its rumbunctious sense of attack. Monstrous shapes leered in a spectral hall of mirrors as the folk theme passed from instrument to instrument under increasingly feverish and agitated treatment. The final blaze of the triumphal, final hymn was fitting testament to the confluence of commitment, artistry and emotion that makes the live music-making of this phenomenal quartet so moving.
Plus, even better, they’re coming back – on May 8 in St Alkmund’s Church, by far the best venue for live classical music in Shrewsbury, and again thanks to the tremendous work of the Shropshire Music Trust.
James Fraser-Andrews
