REVIEWS
TRESKE QUARTET string quartet
Wednesday 11 December 2024 7:30pm
Beethoven – String quartet no. 10 in E flat major, op 74
Stravinsky – Three Pieces for string quartet
Purcell (arr Britten) – Chacony in G minor
Britten – String quartet no. 2 in C major, op 36
The Treske Quartet – graduates of the Royal Northern College of Music – has already appeared in our Afternoon Concert series and is earning a growing reputation. A concert in January 2024 was reviewed in The Observer when their sound was described as ‘meticulously blended’ and their playing had ‘all the impassioned intensity needed’. They describe their programmes as accompanying audiences through a range of music, finding new connections.
Middle-period Beethoven opens their concert at Ilkley – the op 74 was advertised as ‘The Harp’ by its publisher because of its use of plucked arpeggios. But more importantly it shares with Britten’s second string quartet the use of variation form in the final movement. Britten wrote this quartet to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Purcell’s death and it is preceded by his version of a Purcellian set of variations – the Chacony in G minor. The Stravinsky could not be more different – three gleaming gems from completely outside the quartet tradition!
REVIEW BY Chris Skidmore
Quartet returns in a blaze of glory
The Treske Quartet, Manchester-based since their time at the RNCM, were founded in 2017 but their current players – Oliver Bailey (violin), Mollie Wrafter (violin), Abi Hammett (viola) and Robert Wheatley (cello) – first played together in concert in Ilkley two years ago. They returned to the King’s Hall on Wednesday night with a fascinating concert which showcased the many ways in which the string quartet can be used. In the last two years this group has developed a growing reputation both for its programming and for its performances. Technically their playing is of the very highest order but what marks them out is the ensemble and blend between the instruments and the way in which, despite their individual musical personalities, they play as one.
The concert opened with Beethoven’s ‘Harp’ quartet in which the composer is busily challenging the assumptions that have grown up around the barely 50-year-old format. The players smoothed out the jagged edges of the first movement with beautifully graded crescendos and diminuendos, while the pizzicato arpeggios added a note of levity to the proceedings. The slow movement brought out some beautiful mellow tones and the ferocious Scherzo buzzed with energy, even in the magical pianissimo echo at the beginning of the third repeat. The variations that make up the finale were full of character, especially that for the viola.
Even more groundbreaking are the ‘Three pieces’ by Stravinsky in which the quartet must abandon their ensemble and play as individuals. The audience became wholly wrapped up in the performance of this piece which strikes one now as novel as it was 110 years ago. More familiar is Britten’s quartet version of Purcell’s Chacony, which started the second half. The players, who had been all angular isolation in the Stravinsky, combined again to heighten with expressive intensity the Purcellian harmonies.
Finally the Treske quartet gave an immaculate performance of Britten’s second quartet, a piece which combines the astringency of the Stravinsky with the intensity and rich harmonies of the Purcell. It ends with a further lengthy Chacony in which three of the players provide final cadenzas to variations, the second violin maintaining a painfully long drone under that for the viola. There was virtuosity in plenty in the playing here with the whole culminating in a succession of powerful chords accentuated by dramatic gestures from the players.
