Classical and Jazz: Review - Endellion String Quartet at Wigmore Hall
Published: 14 March 2011
by NICK KOCHAN
THE Endellion String Quartet has brought a rigour and seriousness to British quartet performance over the past 30-plus years. They have followed in the footsteps of the Amadeus Quartet, with a serious and careful treatment of the masterworks they approach.
So it was at this concert where they brought their understated but sure touch to two of the quartet canons significant works, the arrangement for string quartet by Hess of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No1, Opus 14, and Brahms’ String Quartet in A minor, Opus 51, No 2. After the interval, they played Beethoven’s magnificent and soulful String Quartet in Eb, Opus 127, which brought out the best in the Endellion.
If the quartet exhibited some tentativeness at the beginning of the performance, they moved into their stride with the allegretto, demonstrating a restraint that enhances the warmth. The Endellion is the quartet in residence at Cambridge University, and an academic caution is never far from their playing. But in the Brahms this translated into a richness, engaging the Wigmore’s devoted audience.
The Endellion treated the darkness and abstraction of the Opus 127, one of Beethoven’s late quartets and composed two years before his death in 1827, with the respect of interpreters of a work of true greatness. These understated masters of their genre deserve a degree of respect that this country may seem rarely to bestow on its most gifted ensembles.