REVIEW: Doric String Quartet

THERE WAS no being deceived by the open-necked shirts of the dark be-suited young Doric Quartet.

It was a Sunday and only 11am, but relaxation was off the mid-morning menu.

Their programme meant business and it delivered.

Mozart in impassioned D minor (K421), a love-besotted and tormented Janacek (Quartet No 2 "Intimate Letters"), and Beethoven embarking on the depths and heights of his Rasumovksy triple bill (Opus 59 No 1 in F).

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A progression from Mozart's most serious Viennese pen-strokes in the medium, through the anguish of a Bohemian at his unresponsive muse, to the intellectually rigorous and musically glorious first Rasumovsky quartet as Beethoven took his decisive leap towards perhaps unsurpassed greatness as a quartet composer.

The intensity of the programme spoke differently of the Doric's attire. This was not music to expect to play comfortably in stuffed shirts.

But it was no lecture. Cellist John Myerscough introduced each work to the audience with an engaging light-but-serious manner Worthing Symphony Orchestra fans are now accustomed to from their conductor John Gibbons.

The ice broken, the Dorics then attempted to freeze time.

They showed the mettle they have developed in the 11 years since they formed in Suffolk at the National School for Young Music Chamber Players.

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The Mozart began tautly and they captured the composer's economy of utterance as he wrote in tribute and dedication to his respected friend and great maestro, Haydn.

The Doric pizzicato created a balletic Minuetto and back came stark more genius-simplicity in the finale's variations.

Constanza, after her husband's death, demonstrated to his publisher that the quartet was composed 40 years beforehand during her first-born child labour.

If various passages suggested Mozart's affinity with her trials, Myerscough pre-warned of "scary" bits, and none more echoed the labour room than the vocally searing passage in the Doric's coda.

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Myerscough also spoke of players of Janacek's quartets undergoing the sufferings of singers in his operas.

"Intimate Letters", by Janacek's own admission are letters of love to the married woman of 23 he fell for at the age of 61 and remained bewitched by for his final 13 years that, ironically and consequentially, proved so fruitful.

Janacek's earlier marriage to a 16-year-old when 27 is, similarly, not only grist to the psychologist's mill but also to the music lover's.

The Doric were plunged from start to finish into even more frightening stuff, with on-the-bridge tremolandi and harmonics, vehement changes of mood, and movements ending with abruptness of impulsively or desperately ended conversations.

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Whether Janacek indulged himself in his unrequited infatuation or whether it was sheer helplessness, this composer, a contemporary of Elgar '” who reacted to frustrated love so differently '” dumped on the quartet world some astonishing music.

The Dorics served it superbly well and likewise the Beethoven. Such riveting playfulness but mastery, such commitment, such depth of inquiry and argument, such reaching toward heights.

It was at times a radiant performance and made me imagine: was this, maybe, was the first string quartet to convey the kind of "whole world" that Mahler aimed for in his own symphonic composing?

The Doric Quartet deserved a third curtain call but the audience, taxed yet richly rewarded, seemed too exhausted to bring them back. What a morning.

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Next Coffee Concert: Lyr Williams (piano, all-Chopin) on January 24. Next quartet: The Elias on February 7.

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