Review: Endellion Quartet; Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, March 15

IT SEEMS only yesterday that the Endellion Quartet were the new kids on the block. Yet here they are celebrating their 40th anniversary, with claims on the title of Britain’s greatest quartet. Shamefully for York, they had not been invited back here for 35 years. We have the British Music Society to thank for remedying that.

Three of the quartet are founder members; the "new" second violinist only joined in 1986. So they know each other like the back of their hand. It shows. Their programme of Haydn, Beethoven and Bartok duplicated their anniversary concert in London in January, but it sounded fresh.

Haydn’s Op 74 No 3, The Rider, began at a canter that soon became a gallop, but the dressage remained immaculate throughout. Haydn’s humour was always on the surface; the Largo was also tenderly phrased, with witty decoration when the theme was repeated.

Through all the uneasy hurdles of Bartok’s Second Quartet, written during the First World War, balance between the voices stayed uncannily smooth. The central caprice benefited from a marvellous degree of relaxation, even in its quiet prestissimo ending. The closing Lento found breathtaking calm that was unruffled by the drama at its core.

Beethoven’s rambling Op 131 is riddled with tempo changes. The players, although hardly looking at one another, sensed them all instinctively. The last Adagio was deeply elegiac, before the final Allegro achieved tremendous positivity, a marvellous catharsis. Come back soon, please.

Martin Dreyer