The Scottish foursome’s Haydn mini-series ends on a high
The Strad Issue: April 2025
Description: The Scottish foursome’s Haydn mini-series ends on a high
Musicians: Maxwell Quartet
Works: Haydn: String Quartets op.77; Three Scots Folk Tunes (arr.Maxwell Quartet)
Catalogue number: LINN CKD741
I am late to the party for the Maxwell Quartet’s Haydn. Better late than never. This album of op.77 shares the fine qualities of its two elder brothers. The Maxwell plays at modern pitch on a blend of old Italian and new Scottish instruments. Its approach to the music follows suit. The Festetics Quartet (Arcana) may be more authentic, with soft gut, artfully styled 18th-century phrasing and a cosy parlour ambience, but there is much to be said for this Scottish ensemble’s more bracing attack, and greater sensitivity to dialogue both between each other and across phrases.
The Minuet of op.77 no.2 goes at quite a lick – Presto uppermost, ma non troppo a minor detail – but at such points where the Maxwell turns its back on tradition, its own ideas are always stylish and musicianly. I like the grainy pure tone the ensemble brings to the slow movements; the sforzandos that nudge and punctuate a phrase but always within the prevailing dynamic; its carefree, smart-casual finales, capitalising on Haydn’s rebellious streak in phrase lengths and shapes.
The bookending arrangements contextualise such lively invention with a creative approach to old tunes which surely would have won Haydn’s approval. At every turn the musicians dig deeper than sentimental or illustrative cliché, even if their hearts really are in the Highlands. Between quartets, the seven-minute recomposition of Master Francis Sitwell… shares an uncanny, paradoxically ancient/modern sensibility with the chamber writing of Thomas Adès.
PETER QUANTRILL
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