Carducci String Quartet
Holy Trinity Church, Haddington 10/9/25
Matthew Denton, Michelle Fleming (violins); Eoin Schmidt-Martin (viola), Emma Denton (cello)
The morning of 10th September at this year’s Lammermuir Festival brought the Carducci Quartet to Haddington’s Holy Trinity Church in a programme of just 2 masterworks from 2 great exponents of the genre, Beethoven’s pithy ‘Quartetto Serioso’ Op.95 in F minor, and Shostakovich’s 1944 2nd Quartet in A major. Both are great favourites of mine (though, to be perfectly candid, all 16 of the Beethovens and all 15 of the Shostakoviches make the cut). Add to that the opportunity for cup of tea and slice of cake which graced the half-hour before every morning Coffee Concert in Holy Trinity, then (how shall I put it?) I’ve had worse mornings. It’s a tough life.
I had already been working in Abu Dhabi for 7 years when, in 1995 and still using Windows 3.11, I got my first dial up internet connection. A few months later, I celebrated upgrading to Windows 95 by adding classical audio clips to replace the system alerts. The jingle played by the machine when Windows 95 booted was the first two peremptory bars of Beethoven Op 95. Thus, a pang of geekish nostalgia is released every time I hear those two bars. The reader will be pleased to hear that that concludes the cringeful anecdote. Those bars are, however, and I shall never cease to maintain this, a cracking opening gambit. In the ensuing compressed Allegro con brio, there is an unrelenting tension between an aspirational lyricism and brutal driven urgency of forward movement. The Carduccis cast it with compelling drama and stark dynamics. The impassive uneasy calm of the opening D-major bars of the Allegretto ma non troppo was caught perfectly by Emma Denton’s cello, answered by fragile sweet lyricism from Matthew Denton’s violin. An unsettling fugal subject, flirting with B-minor but in no particular key, proposed by Eoin Schmidt-Martin’s viola, is the first concrete hint that all is not well. Before long, in music that is anxious and fragmented, we are hopelessly lost. Beethoven starts again in D major but this time keeps any fugal fragments locked into a denser texture. This gets us out of the woods. But directly into another angry embattled F-minor “free and frank exchange of views” as a politician might describe the scherzo. Twice, a slippery quasi-trio flirts with an illusory idyll in a major key, if not entirely clear which one, but twice we are returned to the fray, ending emphatically and abruptly. This was infused with every ounce of drama it could take and thoroughly marvellous. A short plaintive slow introduction launches the finale proper, a wistful songlike Allegretto agitato in 6/8 and F minor. It was awarded lovely cantabile phrasing. A jaunty countermelody first appears en passant in Michelle Fleming’s second violin part, then more prominently on cello, but Beethoven makes nothing more of it. Instead, the music winds down to stillness and a ppp F-major chord. Whereupon, in a glorious non-sequitur, a gleeful scampering F-major Allegro coda romps to a happy conclusion. Fabulous.
I’ve been attending chamber music concerts for five and a half decades and, for all of that time, there have been quartet ensembles captivated by Shostakovich’s oeuvre, and committed to its cogent performance, as I have been a willing captive in their audiences (though I acknowledge that, when I started, only 12 of the 15 had been composed). The Allegris in the 70s and the Fitzwilliams in the 80s gave partial and complete cycles. I attended the first spellbinding Irish performance of the 15th with the RTE Academica String Quartet, their cellist Mihai Dancila on the verge of tears at the heartrending solos as his instrument sang them. The Carduccis have embraced and advanced this performing tradition. I knew it would be good. It wasn’t. It was phenomenal.
The Second Quartet comes close after the 8th Symphony and the 2nd Piano Trio and 6 years after the neo-classical, almost Handelian, insouciant 1st Quartet, which could so easily be by a different composer. The 2nd is gritty and symphonic, not as graphic about war as the 8th Symphony and the 3rd Quartet, but more about the internal struggles of the psyche. A brusque façade of confidence in the rich chords of the opening quickly crumbles to anxiety, betrayed by irregular metre and phrase lengths. A listless benumbed waltz inhabits much of the development. After a truncated recapitulation, the major third is absent from the final chord. It received a compelling characterful reading that held the attention throughout. Bar lines disappear and Jewish tropes, prominent in the 2nd Piano Trio, resurface in the introspective extended Recitative for first violin over held chords which opens the second movement. The Romance that follows is tender and fragile at first but builds to a passionate climax, before returning to the enigmatic Recitative. Fabulously sympathetic playing. The spooky muted Valse that is the episodic third movement becomes a veritable danse macabre before the ghosts vanish back into the woodwork. It was as spellbinding as it was unsettling. Another brief recitative opens the Theme and Variations finale before the viola introduces the Russian theme (with Jewish overtones). The ingenious variations become faster and more complex and abandoned until an anxious climax is reached. As the music climbs down from this crisis, the tension is gradually relaxed in a series of cathartic variations, broadening the metre while sustaining the tempo, with even a hint of the major third appearing. As the opening recitative is reprised, rich chording reasserts the minor key emphatically but cathartically. Older and wiser. Every nuance of this amazing music was pointed to perfection. A very moving performance of a great work. Lump in the throat stuff. The Carducci String Quartet inhabit this music, and it inhabits them.
In a nod to Michelle’s Irish heritage, the encore was a clever arrangement of 3 Irish Reels, including The Lobster. Delightful.