Tippett Quartet

Reviews

Young, fresh, and bold with it

MUSIC
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Tippett Quartet
PURCELL ROOM

The Tippett Quartet, launching “Fresh” a season of performances by young artists, already has a strong following and this concert revealed why. The programme was bold and innovative and the playing combined extraordinary technical accomplishment with flair and a bright, communicative spark. The Tippett Quartet plays with a seasoned cohesion and rapport, but also with the tang of youthful spirit. Only one of the works performed here - Janacek’s Intimate Letters - could be said to be an established repertoire piece, but the ensemble was equally persuasive in tapping the music’s character and giving an assertive profile to Piazzola’s pungent Four, for Tango, the evanescent images of Thomas Ades Arcadiana and the dark, stark, ritualistic force of Gorecki’s Already it Is Dusk. The Tippett’s response embraced an arresting spectrum of colouring between extremes of astringency and refined delicacy. Huge enjoyable and provocative, the concert identified a quartet of such exciting ideas and vital interpretative insight that it promises to make a significant contribution to the realms of chamber
music.

Geoffrey Norris : Daily Telegraph

Passion Under the Skin

It was a shrewd move on the part of the Park Lane Group series to allot a whole hour’s recital to the Tippett String Quartet, rather than slotting it in with other artists in one of the longer concerts. This young ensemble has already proved itself a
persuasive force in contemporary music, and in this programme of four pieces it managed to communicate the sort of passion, polish and panache that can make even the most intractable of the works sound as though it has a purpose. For as long as anyone can remember, the Park Lane Group has been using the same formula for its annual showcase of fresh talent performing modern music, and nothing anybody says seems to persuade the organisers that it might, once in a while, make a nice change to hear something that is not quite so uncompromisingly up to the minute. But the Tippet Quartet in a sense justifies this determined championship of the new, because the playing has such a seething variety of expression and such a bristling sense of character.

Geoffrey Norris : Daily Telegraph

“The programme was bold and innovative and the playing combined extraordinary technical accomplishment with flair and a bright, communicative spark…hugely enjoyable and provocative, the concert identified a quartet of such exciting ideas and vital interpretative insight that it promises to make a significant contribution to the realms of chamber music.”

Geoffrey Norris – Daily Telegraph

“The Tippett Quartet’s performance had enormous cogency and power.”

Tim Ashley – The Guardian

“Combining a fascinating palette of 20th Century repertoire with interpretative conviction and a clear will to communicate, the Tippett Quartet displayed a thoroughly reviving sense of discovery.”

Edward Bhesania – The Strad

“…the playing has such a seething variety of expression and such a bristling sense of character. The Tippett’s got right beneath the music’s skin. The conviction of playing was compelling.”

Geoffrey Norris – Daily Telegraph

“The Tippett Quartet impressed me by their vibrant attack and subtle yet exuberant musicianship…they are a young quartet of rich potential who should go a very long way.”

David Cairns – The Sunday Times

Dodgsonreview

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The Birmingham Post, 31 August 2006
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Dutton CDLX 7159
*****

“Chamber works (Dream City and the grippingly moving The case of the unanswered wire) bring the Tippett Quartet into play on this disc - representing the best, most communicative contemporary music.”

Christopher Morley

International Record Review, March 2006
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“The performances have the composer's full endorsement, and the individual soloists are admirable. I recommend it unreservedly.”

Robert Matthew-Walker

Gramophone, May 2006
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“…the fascinating closing work for string quartet, The Case of the Unanswered Wire, draws on the Morse code sent out from a Russian ship in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War and stutters into silence as the ship is attacked and sinks into the ocean.
Performances here are immaculate, full of life, and above all consistently reveal the composer’s imaginative resource…well worth exploring if you enjoy a piquant musical vocabulary, underpinned by moments of pure lyricism.”

Ivan March