Haydn

String Quartets Opp 20/2, 54/2 & 64/4 Jubilee Quartet

Rubicon RCD1039 65:41 mins

The Jubilee Quartet was founded in

2006 by four Royal Academy students of various nationalities who all happened to be living along London’s Jubilee tube line. This is their debut disc, and the textural balance, immaculate intonation and bright resonance with which they pitch into the opening Allegro con brio of the G major Quartet

Op. 64, No. 2 promises much.

But then, some 23 bars in, where Haydn briefly slips into a minor key transition, they suddenly fine down their tone to a ghostly remoteness which, though a striking effect in itself, seems an exaggerated response to Haydn’s simple marking of piano.

This tendency to fuss details or over-dramatise effects runs through these performances, intermittently qualifying what is, otherwise, some excellent playing. In the C major Quartet Op. 54, No. 2 – one of Haydn’s most unusually structured – the ‘expressive’ rubato with which the leader inflects the floridly plaintive first violin line in its slow movement sounds contrived rather than immediate, impeding the flow. And the underlying pulse of the wonderful Adagio of the Quartet in C major, Op. 20, No. 2 is so pulled around in this account, that the movement’s abrupt cross-cutting of stark unisons, jagged recitatives and sad processionals fails to cohere.

Yet even here one has to admire the variety of timbre and intensity achieved by bow-pressure alone with very little resort to vibrato. Maybe all one is asking of these accomplished players is an approach a little less ‘studied’, closer to the spontaneous responses Haydn might have expected of his fellow players. Bayan Northcott PERFORMANCE ★★★

RECORDING ★★★★