Review: Maggini Quartet

DEVOTEES of British music are indebted to the Maggini Quartet’s campaign to record and perform our rich collection of chamber works, and at their Huddersfield Music Society concert, violist Martin Outram declared Frank Bridge’s quartets the finest of the 20th century.

Bridge was a contemporary of Vaughan Williams and Holst, and a celebrated string quartet player. The Magginis’ incandescent performance of his Second Quartet showed Bridge to be a major composer, unjustly overshadowed by his contemporaries.

The piece is rooted in rural England, highly chromatic and harmonically ingenious. It has a sensuous intensity not found among Bridge’s English contemporaries, with a hint of Ravel and – in the second movement – Debussy. The Magginis were such good advocates for this music because they were so clear even when being passionate. Their approach was characterised by the unique yearning song-like qualities of Outram and cellist Michal Kaznowski. This revelatory performance was framed by Beethoven’s gentle Op. 18 No. 3 Quartet and an account of Mendelssohn’s Op. 44 No. 3 Quartet that showed its composer to be more sophisticated than we think.

n The Magginis appear next week at Nunthorpe (Feb 13), Ripon (Feb 14) and Skipton (Feb 15).