Scottish Ensemble: Spring Quartet Tour
University of Glasgow Concert Hall 11/3/26
Jonathan Morton (director/violin), Cheryl Crocket (violin), Jayne Atkins (viola), Ben Michaels (cello)
https://scottishensemble.co.uk/programme/2025-26/between-light-and-shadow/
The night of 11th March in the Concert Hall of the University of Glasgow was the venue of the 4th of 6 performances in the Spring Tour of the Scottish Ensemble String Quartet, a programme titled ‘Between Light and Shadow’. Contrary to appearances in Google Maps, there is no obvious vehicular access to (or, as I saw later, parking on) the campus and precious little legal parking nearby. This inconvenience conspired with the perfect storm of inaccessibility, including foul weather, motorway congestion (standstill) and lane closures, the early 7 pm start time, inadequate signage and lighting on campus, and the “concealment” of the venue on the first floor, making me slightly late for the start. That said, I was allowed in and seated midway through the exposition of the first work on the programme and, as exposition repeats were honoured, I actually missed nothing.
That first work is a great favourite of mine, Mozart’s 1782 G Major K.387, nicknamed ‘Spring’. That spring would be more Austrian than Scottish, I would wager, as the music is mostly sunny. It is the first of the set of 6 dedicated to Haydn and, apart from its utter perfection, it is a favourite because it is the first Mozart quartet of which I learned to play the first violin part, emulating my father. Later, I played the second violin part in ensemble. In my youth (the 70s), the performing tradition, supported by the scholarship of the day, was to play Mozart and Haydn accaciature as appoggiature. The Scottish Ensemble played them as written, which is of course entirely logical and sensible, though strange to my older ear, Mozart pays homage to Haydn’s “democratisation” of quartet writing through emulation: everybody gets delicious goodies to play; the second violin even gets to introduce the second theme. Glorious playing. By the end of the sunny first movement I had forgotten the trauma of getting to the concert. Unusually for Mozart, the Minuet and Trio comes next. Chromaticism, present in patches in the first movement, goes into playful overdrive, with mischievous displaced accents disrupting the minuet tempo. The first real ‘Shadow’ appears in the G-minor Trio, an angry unison outburst followed by anxious responses from the first violin, being driven into remote keys by implacable chromaticism from the cello. This gives the reprise of the otherwise sunny Minuet an “older and wiser” vibe. If I didn’t already know how much fun this is to play, I could have gleaned as much from the musicians’ faces. The Andante cantabile has to be a candidate for the title of “Mozart’s Most Beautiful Slow Movement”, an idyllic, rhapsodic C-major song with first violin as the protagonist. Jonathan Morton made it shine. There was special magic in a hushed central passage when a range of remote keys are explored. Perfect. Back to G major for the joyous fugal finale that looks forward to the finale of the Jupiter symphony of 6 years later. There is both ‘Light’ and ‘Shadow’ and plenty of ‘Between’ with another liberal helping of chromaticism, pacey and gleeful. With a final cheeky wink at the audience, the work concludes with a throwaway piano cadence. Superb.
Caroline Shaw’s Second Essay (Echo) and Third Essay (Ruby) were written to commission in 2018, and with the First Essay of 2 years earlier form ‘Three Essays for String Quartet’. We heard the Second and Third. Shaw appears fascinated by the pattering of rain on different surfaces and the Second Essay opened with such a sound effect, though I couldn’t see for certain how it was produced – it sounded like bows pressed hard on strings and moved with a fragmented series of very short stick-slip motions. For a while, the effect alternated with a pattern of quiet harmonious chords. A simple 8-chord pattern was set up and got faster, accumulating complexity. After a climax it returned to the opening simplicity. The Third Essay was faster and seemed to have folk influences in the pizzicato rhythm and arco phrase structure, with hints of Bluegrass. A lyrical central section became quite contrapuntal. The pizzicato rhythm retuned before a wild coda. I can honestly say I’ve never heard a Shaw piece I didn’t like. Performed with conviction and persuasive advocacy.
After the interval was the third of Beethoven’s 1806 ‘Razumovsky’ String Quartets, Op.59 No.2 in E minor, commissioned by the Russian ambassador in Vienna, all of which contain a Russian tune worked somewhere into the score. The first movement’s fractured turbulent mood, with stops, starts and pauses and moments of downright fury, has much in common with the 5th Symphony which he was working on at the time. Even the lyrical second theme has a sense of exposed vulnerability. The playing sustained the E-minor dramatic tension right to the end, even as, in the last 5 bars, the dynamic subsides from fortissimo to piano. The contrast with the Molto adagio is stark: E-major exquisite stillness, while the first violin’s tender reverie sings softly. But it too has its moments of ‘Shadow’ to perturb the meditative idyll, with two intense climaxes before drifting out of consciousness, or perhaps out of our hearing. The quirky limping Allegretto has the metre of a minuet, but its displaced accents defy any attempt at dancing. Its Trio has the E-major Russian theme, so delicious that the Trio is reprised, though Beethoven does not treat it with affection. Despite the G-major/E-minor key signature, the Presto Finale galumphs off cross-country in a skittish C-major. Before long the turbulence of the first movement returns to infect the rather forced high spirits. The movement ends in an angry final dash of self-destructive E-minor. Chamber music at its most dramatic performed by four musicians very much ‘in the zone’. Excellent.
The weather for the walk back to the car and the journey home was even fouler than earlier, but there was a spring in my step. The lane closures on the motorway were even more intractable, but I had happy earworms for company. “To be a pilgrim ...”