Charlotte Gardner attends the performance of Beethoven, Janáček and Brahms at London’s Wigmore Hall on 19 June 2025
‘You’re here for the air conditioning, aren’t you?’ quipped James Ehnes, and with the London evening still a toasty 30 degrees, Wigmore Hall’s coolness was almost as invigorating as the passion and rhythmic punch served up by the Ehnes Quartet.
First, a radiantly springing Beethoven Quartet op.18 no.6, with high contrasts applied to its plethora of fp and sf markings, and heady juxtapositions of dynamics. There was no lack of finesse either, with Ehnes sailing through the somersaulting violin writing in the Scherzo’s Trio with serene perfection.
Janáček’s ‘Intimate Letters’ Quartet, with its memories – real or imagined – of the composer and his muse-cum-infatuation Kamila Stösslová, were aptly viscerally charged. The Ehnes Quartet performed from the urtext recently created from Janáček’s autograph manuscripts and brought a virtuosic, stream-of-consciousness volatility to its opening’s sfz markings and accelerandos. This set the tone for the wild ride that followed, by turns raw, desperate and lyrical, over which Che-Yen Chen’s velvety viola, as Stösslová, constantly seduced.
Brahms’s String Quartet no.2 opened slowly, darkly, searchingly, into a big-boned reading plumbing its own contrasts. Then an encore: back to Beethovenian merriness and the finale of op.18 no.4, greeted by the audience with noisy cheers.
CHARLOTTE GARDNER
Review: Ehnes Quartet: Beethoven
Read: Star violinist James Ehnes on his ‘other’ life as a chamber musician
No comments yet