Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh – 16/03/26
Michael Trainor (violin), Emily Holland (violin), Miguel Sobrinho (viola), Jessie Ann Richardson (cello)
The fine New Town Concerts 2025/2026 season concluded this evening with an accomplished and engaging programme at the Queen’s Hall. This featured signature quartets from Brahms and Dvorak wrapped around a brief, intriguing recent work from Charlotte Harding, inspired by a rugged and beautiful isle off the west coast of Scotland.
Brahms’ String Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1, was hard wrought. A version existed seven years before the composer finally completed it in 1873, along with the second quartet. It followed a host of other abandoned versions, multiple revisions, and at least one private hearing to accommodate yet further changes.
While it never entirely loses the driving intensity unleashed in the opening Allegro, there is a tenderness throughout the piece (especially in the light and somewhat melancholic third movement, Allegretto molto moderato e comodo). There are also moments of Spring joy which belie Brahms’ tortured compositional processes.
The Piatti Quartet gave this dramatic masterwork a deeply affecting performance, infusing its beauty with the formal coherence its thematically organised structure requires. The song-like second moment (Romanze: poco adagio) was delightfully delicate, and the tightly-knitted counterpoint of the Allegro finale delivered with passion and rich sonority.
The commendable commitment of this outstanding ensemble to contemporary music was reflected in their choice of the eclectic Charlotte Harding’s Iorsa as the second work in the first half of the concert. This is a piece commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival and the Piatti Quartet back in 2022. It has stayed in their live schedule ever since, including their recent ambitious Irish tour of seven concerts in just six days.
Opening with haunting cries and harmonics, this sensitive and emotionally charged five-minute work references folk roots and Romantic sensibilities. At the same time, it is of its age: tonal, lingering, but with chromatic undertones and wispily subtle, delicate bowing techniques. A rare Celtic treat.
Unlike Brahms (who championed his work), Dvorak completed his String Quartet No. 13 in G major, Op. 106, principally in less than a month at the end of 1895. It was the first work he completed wholly on his native Bohemian soil, and it marked a resurgence of creativity after success in Britain and homesickness in the United States. An extraordinary accomplishment, it also illustrates the quality at the heart of the composer’s output — something which programming that resorts only to his best known works does not always highlight. The inspiration lies especially at the margins.
This four movement quartet proceeds with parallel sections of complex and restless music, by turns major and minor in places. Swooping intervals, tremulous triplets and urgent repetitions abound in the opening movement. The second is brooding, beautiful and Slavonic in tone; the scherzo percussive, circular, yet somehow familiar (shades of ‘New World’), and the finale dance-like, joyful and ingenious in its concluding integration of earlier themes.
Visiting Scotland on the back their demanding Irish tour, the Piatti Quartet have this repertoire firmly under their belts. Yet they are also able to deliver it with freshness, vigour, exceptional technique and genuine feeling.
The encore was another brief contemporary piece, the deliciously pleading Cantilena from Joseph Phibbs’ String Quartet No. 4, released by the Piatti on a 2024 Nimbus recording. It features a simple, evocatively melody which ascends from the cello to the whole quartet.
Altogether, a glorious evening’s music-making from one of the most inspiring ensembles operating within and well beyond these isles. Do check out their new CD, ‘Phantasy’ (Rubicon, 2026), which brings together overlooked Irish composers and English masters, together with the brief world premiere recording of Michael Tippett’s tribute to Stravinsky, In Memoriam Magistri.
* New Town Concerts: https://www.facebook.com/Newtownconcerts/
Simon Barrow is a writer, educator, commentator and poet whose musical interests span new music, classical, jazz, electronica and art rock. His latest book is ‘Beyond Our Means: Poetry, Prose and Blue Runes’ (Siglum, 2025). His ‘Transfiguring the Everyday: The Musical Vision of Michael Tippett’ will be published in 2026.
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