Regency Quartet
Brighton Dome, Corn exchange
25 March 2026
The concert opened with a pleasing account of Mozart’s K465 quartet. It’s a good choice with which to warm up both performers and audience because it offers equal prominence to all four players especially in the Hadynesque (it was dedicated to Haydn in 1785) adagio opening section. The andante cantabile came with loving tenderness and lots of eye control and the clarity of the semi-quavers in the final allegro was notable. And, as always, I was struck by the way the lofty Corn Exchange acoustic, which looks so unlikely with its huge space behind the players, actually allows us to hear every note.
Jesse Montgomery’s Strum (reworked for string quartet in 2012) provided a complete contrast. The seven minute piece is inspired by folk songs, protest songs and dance music and includes a great dela of the titular “strum”. Jamie Howe began with his viola in guitar position and all four players demonstrated rhythmic pizzicato with chords across the strings in both directions – all rather fascinating and enjoyable, especially when violin harmonics topped the texture.
After the interval came Webern’s 1905 more familiar Langsamer Satz, written when he was only 22, still a student, and long before he started experimenting with atonality. The Regency Quartet delivered it with lots of wistful lyricism, lovely playing from Olwen Miles (Violin 2) when she introduces the melody and delicately muted piano sections. It’s a piece which requires a great deal of imaginative control which it certainly got in this performance.
Shostakovich’s String Quartet no 3 is an extraordinary work. Written in 1946 under the Stalinist regime, it presumably tested the composer’s fragile relationship with the establishment. It was rarely performed in public after its premiere and Shostakovich soon withdrew his potentially provocative headings for the five movements,
In this performance there was a string sense of virtuosic wonder. In the opening movement Mabelle Young-Eun introduced the typically Shostokovich-ian melody with verve and, at the point when it goes fugal, the other three nailed the anxious, chromatic insouciance rather well. Then they found all the right disquieting menacing (sinister?) tone for the second movement with its strange percussive pianissimo.
The war-like (surely that’s what the composer intended?) third movement needs, and found, huge reserves of energy and the contrasting funereal adagio followed with some beautiful lachrymose violin playing in the instrument’s highest register and some solemn near-unison statements. I especially admired Ellen Baimring’s cello work here along with Howe’s poignant viola solo
It’s a pleasure to see and hear four young players performing such challenging work with such vibrant passion and intensity.
