The Strad Recommends: Signum Quartet: A Dark Flaring

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: September 2025

Description: An album of South African quartets proves profoundly thrilling

Musicians: Signum Quartet

Works: Music by Louis and Matthijs van Dijk, Fokkens, Koapeng, Rainier and van Wyk

Catalogue number: ECM 4878225

The six pieces included on this enthralling album reflect as many different ways of reconciling that most Western European art form – the string quartet – with the heritage of South African culture and history. This is most obvious in Mokale Koapeng’s hypnotic Komeng, a piece inspired by Xhosa initiation rituals in which col legno effects evoke the sounds of the uhadi (a one-stringed instrument played with a stick). Comparably, Péter Louis van Dijk references the plucked-stringed mbira in his iinyembezi (the Xhosa word for ‘tears’), a piece consisting of several harmonically daring variations on Dowland’s song, ‘Flow my tears’; à la Britten’s Lachrymae, the theme is heard in its full form only at the end.

Arnold van Wyk’s hauntingly beautiful Five Elegies have at their centre an unaccompanied viola solo, here most eloquently played by Xandi van Dijk, the Signum Quartet’s South African violist, whose enthusiasm for his country’s music has audibly ignited his colleagues, prompting from them performances of great conviction throughout this multifaceted and demanding programme.

The album’s title is taken from a poem behind Robert Fokkens’s Glimpses of a half-forgotten future, an atmospheric piece again referencing the uhadi. Matthijs van Dijk’s (rage) rage against the reflects its creator’s eclectic background in film music, rock and metal, while Priaulx Rainier’s sophisticatedly built String Quartet bears testimony to her studies with Nadia Boulanger. Shirley Apthorp’s illuminating notes further enhance the value of this beautifully produced CD, which I can’t recommend too strongly.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE