Review: Endellion String Quartet *****

At The Venue, Leeds

Fashions change, but I doubt that even Bartok would have believed his savage, acerbic and at times bleak Fifth Quartet could one day receive the tumultuous applause afforded this superb performance from the Endellion String Quartet.

There was nothing pretty in their playing of the outer movements where violence prevails, yet even in the most hectic passages – of which there are many – the care over textural quality

brought an infinite amount of inner detail.

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Where Bartok restores peace, in the second and fourth movements, the Endellion brought a feeling of bleary-eyed sadness, with the music sighing as it passed around the instruments.

By contrast the surrounding works were full of vivacity and happiness, Mozart's Fifteenth Quartet being written at the height of his career and packed full of musical ideas, here drawing an account expressed from a vast tonal palette.

It was one of six he dedicated to Haydn, and it was with his last of the opus 76 quartets that the concert ended.

The playing here and throughout the concert was at a remarkable level of accuracy and virtuosity.