The Strad Recommends: Isidore Quartet: Adorations

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: June 2026

Description: A scintillating debut album from a Banff winner

Musicians: Isidore Quartet

Works: Haydn: String Quartet op.20 no.2. Barber: Adagio. Mendelssohn: String Quartet op.44 no.3. Price: Adoration

Catalogue number: DELOS DE3622

ADORATIONS

‘A celebration of chamber music at its essence – a tapestry of joy, human connection, and the enduring resonance of lives intertwined’ is how the New York City-based Isidore Quartet, winner of the 2022 Banff Competition, describes its debut album’s multifaceted exploration of adoration in its various guises. And so it is. From the warmly witty conversation of Haydn’s op.20 no.2, through the tender ache and catharsis of Barber’s Adagio, to Mendelssohn’s op.44 no.3 (exuding his newlywed’s delight in life and love) and, finally, Florence Price’s prayerful 1951 miniature, ‘Adoration’ (arranged by Samuel Araya), this finely wrought programme is performed with tender humanity.

All the pieces are presented with such poise and finesse, too. There is a mesmerising account of Haydn’s slow movement (entitled ‘Capriccio’), marrying lucid-textured tonal sweetness, filigree articulation and skilfully measured silence and rubato. Barber’s Adagio retains poise and purity even at its point of climax, with colouristic pleasures including the prominence of the darkly organ-esque unison viola line under the violin at 5’47”. Then sleek pizzazz for the Mendelssohn’s virtuoso ensemble writing and other-worldly drama – savour the warm spring of its very opening; and later, the steely drive of the lower strings’ rolling waves as this feather-light Scherzo enters its final half-minute. All in all, thoroughly adoration-worthy.

Charlotte Gardner