Royal String Quartet
Holy Trinity Church, Leamington
The first chamber music offering of the new year and, if this fine appearance by the Royal Quartet is anything to go by all is looking very promising for 2026.
Mozart’s Quartet 13 in D Minor got the year under way, as crisp as the plummeting weather outside but with just enough substance to sustain.
Mozart’s ability to conjure variation and invention from comparatively meagre ingredients was display here, the quartet trading brief bursts of rhythmic figure to pleasing effect. A fine chromatic final movement underlined the minor key introspection of the whole piece without it ever getting too sombre.
As might be anticipated in a visit from a Polish ensemble, the programme featured a quartet by a composer of that nation and Grazyna Bacewicz’s moody 4th quartet provided the opportunity to showcase the expansive textures the quartet is known for.
Some sprightly folk-influenced pizzicato bass hinted almost at jazz and there were plenty of chances for all four players to carry the melody and impetus above an underlying chordal stratum utterly in keeping with the piece’s mid-twentieth century composition.
Brahms has always seemed to both require and procure more resources from a string quartet than really should be available.
The A Minor second quartet played here stretched the ensemble fully and, particularly in the delightfully-paced slower second movement, provided a memorable, full sound given perfect support by the church’s deep acoustic. There may well be more factors than architecture alone at play, but the deeper ranges of the cello seem better here than in any other venue.
Holy Trinity has stood in well while the traditional Pump Rooms setting is out of action. With such a rich acoustic and, perhaps more trivially, better parking a case could easily be made for holding concerts here more regularly. The excellent turnout for this evening could certainly be seen as a positive endorsement.
The Henschel Quartet from Germany are next up in this engrossing series on February 13 while the Royal String Quartet can be seen back in these parts in September for a weekend focussing on Polish music and the nation’s wider culture.
Visit leamingtonmusic.org for details of more upcoming musical events and booking details.
Matthew Salisbury
