Malion Quartet: Departure

The Strad Issue: January 2025

Description: A quartet to watch, as this inventive programme proves

Musicians: Malion Quartet

Works: Beethoven: String Quartet in F major op.59. no.1 ‘Rasumovsky’. Holst: Phantasy Szymanowski: String Quartet no.1

Catalogue number: SOLAIRE SOL1016

The Malion Quartet’s cellist Bettina Kessler produces an attractive woody tone in the opening theme of Beethoven’s First ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet, and there are vivid contrasts thereafter between vehement power and gentler lyricism, and between extremes of dynamics. This is a theatrical performance, with sometimes biting bowing, which is present again in the following Allegretto, with its driving rhythmic energy and strong sense of narrative – whatever the story is, they tell it with gusto, in striking colours.

First violinist Alex Jussow and Kessler mould the opening theme of the third-movement Adagio subtly and with profound feeling. Beethoven’s long, fluid lines are elegantly shaped, with a lyricism which belies the existence of bow changes, before Jussow’s florid hemidemisemiquaver runs usher in the Russian theme of the fourth movement. They are both gleeful and intense here, pulsing with rhythmic energy.

Imogen Holst’s Phantasy for string quartet is an attractive work, written in 1928 when she was just 21. It marries English folk-music influences with French ones, not least hints of Ravel: its constant sense of invention is well-served in this robust, multicoloured performance.

The Malion Quartet plays the complex part-writing of Szymanowski’s First Quartet with clarity, embracing its rich chromatic language with plenty of expressive nuance. In the last movement the parts are written in four different keys, which enables each musician to play the theme of the opening fugato without leaving home, as it were. The recording is close and clear.

TIM HOMFRAY