Škampa Quartet at Wigmore Hall – Shostakovich & Dvořák
Wigmore Hall London, 18. October 2010, BBC Radio 3 Live Broadcast
Shostakovich, String Quartet No.11 in F minor, Op.122
Dvořák, String Quartet No.15 in G, Op.106
This well chosen program by the Škampa Quartet was very much a ‘light and shade’ affair, and made an extremely satisfying hour-long BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert.
…Shostakovich [String Quartet No.11] often pits the first violin against the rest of the quartet, and Helena Jiříkovská captured the sense of struggle particularly in the fast ‘Etude’, in which her rapid figurations circled closely around a central pitch, struggling to break clear. At moments of repose the Škampa members were beautifully sensitive, creating a hush throughout the hall so that it was easy to pick out each individual voice, while they pressed home the composer’s ostinato passages so that they became impossible to avoid…
By contrast, Dvořák’s final published string quartet [Op.106] received a gloriously uninhibited performance. There are few thrills in chamber music to compare with a Czech string-quartet playing the music of its home-country. The Škampa caught the composer’s happiness on his returning to Bohemia from America in 1895… Once again a feature of the performance was a close attention to dynamic markings, with Jiříkovská in particular resisting the temptation to dominate proceedings, the ensemble extremely well balanced.
Ben Hogwood, Classicalsource.com
