I went with my daughter to the final concert of the Doric String Quartet’s residency at the Wiltshire Music Centre. The hall was full, and there were few people I recognised, so there is clearly a distinct audience here from the one which goes to chamber concerts in Bath.
When I saw the programme, I wondered why Berg’s Lyric Suite and Beethoven’s op. 132 were both on it. I had no complaints as they are both favourites of mine, but surely this would risk severe emotional overload in the audience, to say nothing of the demands on the performers? Perhaps the point is that either of these quartets is liable to overwhelm the other works on the programme so the answer is to pair them with one another. They certainly stand up to this treatment; for example, the discord in the penultimate chord of the introduction to op. 132 is no less jarring, even after you’ve just heard half an hour of Berg.
The Lyric Suite was preceded by a short talk from the cellist, who drew attention in particular to Berg’s skill at concealing the formal structures in his compositions. (Although once you know what the quartet is really about, it becomes very hard to keep listening for retrograde inversions of the tone-row anyway). I felt that their interpretation wasn’t quite there yet; there could have been more contrast and it seemed as if some players were more comfortable with the style than others. (My benchmark for comparison was a performance by the Hagen Quartet in the Wigmore Hall a few years ago.)
The Beethoven was more successful, although a little fast for my taste. The concert opened with an early quartet by Haydn, and a movement from another Haydn quartet served as an encore.
The Berg and Beethoven quartets will be performed in some of the quartet’s future concerts. See their website here.