Dudok Quartet: Terra Memoria

The Strad Issue: February 2026

Description: A much-missed composer finds kinship with Shostakovich

Musicians: Dudok Quartet

Works: Saariaho: Terra Memoria. Shostakovich: String Quartet no.3; 24 Preludes op.34: nos.1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 12 and 22 (arr. quartet)

Catalogue number: RUBICON RCD1218

Saariaho’s Terra Memoria is dedicated to the departed and delves into memories as they fleetingly immortalise images and emotions. This sense of transience is depicted at times with a burst of white sound, a full range of timbres conveying Saariaho’s surreal world with sul ponticello, false harmonics, tremolando and the like; the performance is mesmerising.

This duality impacts on Shostakovich’s Third Quartet too, in a reading that underpins heightened emotions with lean and clear articulation, allowing the contrapuntal dialogues to speak with lucidity. Strikingly brutal articulation in the third-movement Allegro produces a thrillingly menacing, rhythmically charged rendition.

Yet equally pivotal emotional moments are compellingly fervent, with wider, richer vibrato in the unison in the Adagio, which in the next moment returns to a whispering fragility. The Adagio’s sombre darkness gives way to the white-hot intensity at the climax of the concluding Moderato, but even here, a simple folk-inspired melody interrupts the musical discourse, underlining the instability of contrasting emotions.

The skilful and imaginative programming on this disc concludes with strikingly idiomatic arrangements of a selection of Shostakovich’s op.34 Piano Preludes. You could be forgiven for thinking that these were original works for string quartet and the Dudok presents a kaleidoscope of emotions, setting the seal on a superbly compelling release.

JOANNE TALBOT