“the Badke Quartet already seems into its first maturity … leader Heather Höhmann produced a vibrant, open tone that the other members instinctively matched”
Though still two years from its tenth anniversary, the Badke Quartet already seems into its first maturity. Closing the London Chamber Music Society’s season, the players mixed Haydn and Mendelssohn with the world premiere of James Francis Brown’s String Quartet.
In Haydn’s ‘Fifths’ Quartet op.76 no.2 leader Heather Höhmann produced a vibrant, open tone that the other members instinctively matched, enlivening the slightly unforgiving acoustic of Kings Place’s Hall One along the way. Their first movement was propulsive and dramatic, and the ‘Witches’ Minuet’ swaggered and cackled. But the highlight was the intimate, moonlit pizzicato of the three instruments supporting Höhmann’s aria-like theme in the Andante.
Mendelssohn’s A minor String Quartet op.13 moved into another dimension with a well-judged, plushed-up tone whose richness diverted rather than compensated for a slightly leaden second-movement fugue and an Intermezzo whose central-section scherzo episode didn’t quite flicker enough.
The Badke players gave their all to James Francis Brown’s substantial, 35-minute String Quartet. Its bustling counterpoint, modal flavour and parallel harmonies point to Tippett. The players never stinted on projecting its joyful exuberance, revealing it as something of a showpiece, though it’s
much more than that. They were equally attuned to imaginative episodes such as a magical, returning distant madrigal and a section calling for strummed pizzicato.