Schubert String Quintet
St Mary’s Church, Whitekirk 13/09/25
Maxwell Quartet, Laura van der Heijden cello
As a retired opera singer, I tend to avoid reviewing chamber music, as I have never played an instrument or any chamber music in my life. I tend to leave that to other colleagues in the EMR more qualified than me to write about that particular genre. However, I’ve always wanted to look inside St Mary’s, Whitekirk, I feel I should have listened to at least one concert featuring this year’s Lammermuir Artist in Residence, Laura van der Heijden, and I love the Schubert String Quintet, so indulge me!
I turned up on a rather rainy evening to find the little church filled to the brim with music lovers, and was delighted by the austere beauty of this country church, which dates from around 1439. It’s red sandstone exterior rather negates the name Whitekirk, but, apparently, for many years its exterior was whitewashed, hence the name. It was a place of pilgrimage in the middle Ages, and was visited for this purpose by Aeneas Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, who was forced to land near Dunbar on a secret mission to Scotland. Grateful to survive, he walked through the snow to Whitekirk, the nearest pilgrimage spot to Dunbar, and offered thanks to God for sparing his life.
Now, many centuries later, it has been bought from the Church of Scotland by a group of locals, who hope to continue its history in a new way.
It’s a simple long church with a crossing which houses the organ and a pulpit, and the Maxwell Quartet played at the East end. This brilliant quartet consists of four friends who met up playing in youth orchestras throughout Scotland, and, as postgraduate students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2010, the Maxwell Quartet was founded. Equally at home in folk music and classical repertoire, their abiding feature is the way they take pleasure in playing. It was tremendously refreshing to watch the smiles, winks, looks and nods of the players as they entertained us with a delightful programme of music for strings from the folk tradition, the world of the Gaelic Psalm tradition in the Outer Hebrides, the transformation of Renaissance church music into string quartet sound, and, in the second half, with the fantastic addition of cellist, Laura van der Heijden, Schubert’s late great String Quintet.
They began with their own interpretation of the psalm tradition from the Western Isles whereby a precentor sings a line after which the congregation follows, with each member allowed to embellish the melody as they wish, producing an extraordinary soundscape. Tonight, it was largely Duncan Strachan on cello who played the role of precentor, and the violins of Colin Scobie and George Smith, along with Elliot Perks on viola who played the part of the congregation. It was a wonderfully other-worldly sound, unlike anything I have ever heard, and when they segued into a couple of jigs and reels from Shetland, the audience went wild.
By contrast, the Maxwells next played a superb rendition of William Byrd’s motet, ‘Ave Verum Corpus’, first published in 1605, as a string quartet. I have sung this motet many times, and it was wonderful to hear it in an entirely different context. The acoustic of St Mary’s Whitekirk is superb, resonant but warm, and that also contributed to the appeal of this excellent concert.
Continuing the theme of modern transcriptions of Renaissance music, we heard the string quartet, Aloysius, by the English composer, Edmund Finnis (born 1984), which uses as its theme another Byrd motet, ‘Christe qui lux est et dies’. This dreamy and ethereal work was again played with total commitment by the Maxwells, the music making use of contemporary techniques to create a readily accessible beauty.
The interval, which allowed us to wander round this lovely little church, permitted us to let the lovely, dreamy music of the first half to dissipate in readiness for one of the greatest compositions of all time, Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major. Written in the last year of his life, the same year as the last piano sonatas and the great group of Heine songs, later published as part of ‘Schwanengesang’, the Quintet remains one of the best loved of Schubert’s many compositions. Huge in scope and monumental in performance, it takes the listener to another place, and even another dimension.
The Maxwell Quartet was joined by the brilliant English cellist, Laura van der Heijden (she has a Dutch father), who won the BBC Young Musician of the year in 2012, aged 15. In the ensuing years, she has gone on to become one of the world’s great cellists, and, as Resident Artist at this year’s Lammermuir Festival, she has been popping up all over East Lothian, entertaining audiences and winning hearts. I hadn’t heard her before, but from the very first notes of the first movement, we could hear a special talent at work. The first time I heard the Quintet, at a long ago Edinburgh Festival, the second cellist was Rostropovich, and I still remember his magic pizzicato playing. However, that memory has been superseded now by Ms van der Heijden, and not just by her playing. I alluded to the enjoyment clearly demonstrated by the Maxwell Quartet in the first half, and that was even more to the fore when joined by the young cello superstar, who clearly was having a ball playing this wonderful music with such fine and friendly colleagues. Sometimes instrumentalists can look grim, as they concentrate on the fiendish notes they have to play, but here it was a delight to watch the fun the five of them were having.
Having listened to recordings of the Quintet for years, it was also a true privilege to watch a live performance, and to see what we are hearing. I had no idea that the second cello plays so much pizzicato in the first movement in contrast to its quartet partners, and it was fascinating to watch the interaction between Ms van der Weijden and Duncan Strachan on the other cello. The fact that both instruments (if I read the programme notes accurately) were 17th century Ruggieri from Cremona made the sound even more spectacular. I once sang solo bass in a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass in Cremona with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, and I remember being struck by how many great instrument makers were working in that small Italian town over roughly a hundred year period – Stradivari, Ruggieri, Amati and Guarneri. It’s absolutely staggering, and the wonder is that many of these over 400 year old instruments are still being played by modern virtuosi.
The Quintet was utterly captivating – the long first movement a thing of wonder, the slow movement when time seems to stand still, the jolly horn calls of the Scherzo, and finally the majestic sweep of the final movement, as it twists and turns into a race for the finishing line, leaving us all breathless, and bringing on a fusillade of bravos!
This was a truly marvellous concert.
photo credit: rich watson
