Young Classical Music Artists Agency and Promoter

18th January 2009

The Doric String Quartet perform Haydn's music with spirit, wit and sophistication at Wigmore Hall. Rating: ***

Haydn would have had a quiet chuckle. One of those practical jokes he plays in his string quartets worked liked a dream in this concert. To be fair to us in the audience, though, it was well nigh impossible not to fall into the trap.

It did sound as if the B flat major Op 50 No 1 had come to an end, and the members of the Doric String Quartet did rather mischievously raise their bows in the air with a convincing gesture of finality. But then, as the applause began to thunder, they carried on.

Game, set and match to Haydn, with one of his notorious trick endings which, no matter how often you hear them, can so easily catch you out. Nobody said “shh”. We all just laughed, which is surely what Haydn would have wanted.

Haydn and the Doric are a perfect match. This is an ensemble, young but mature of insight, that plays Haydn's music with spirit, illuminating its blend of wit and sophistication, grace and vivacity, cunning and seemingly effortless spontaneity.

The programme spanned much of Haydn's career as a quartet composer, starting with the D minor Op 9 No 4, then straddling the interval with the first two from the Op 50 set, and finishing with the G major Op 76 No 1 of 1797.

As Richard Wigmore says in his invaluable new Haydn pocket guide (Faber), Charles Burney heard the Op 76 quartets in London, admiring their “invention, fire, good taste and new effects”, commenting that they “seem the product, not of a sublime genius who has written so much and so well already, but one of highly cultivated talents, who had expended none of his fire before”.

Much the same could be said about the whole range of quartets in this concert.
The Doric‘s performances, without exaggeration but with just the right degree of elucidation, revealed the music’s extraordinary originality and the way that Haydn can explore the potential of his thematic material so thoroughly yet so artlessly.
The Doric was strong on deft characterisation, be it what Wigmore aptly describes as the “yodelling serenade” at the centre of Op 76 No 1‘s minuet or the haunting aura of Op 9 No 4, Haydn’s first minor key quartet.

Unequivocally, these were performances of terrific panache and perception, seeming to get right under the skin of Haydn's creative genius.

The Sunday Telegraph Wigmore Hall 18 January 2009