Strathearn Music Society Review – Resol String Quartet

Wed 19th November 2025

It’s not long since the Resol String Quartet last played in Crieff (February last year, to be precise) and, despite a 50% change in personnel since that occasion they have exactly the same ability to get audiences to sit up and listen. From a review of their 2024 concert terms such as “emotionally and technically challenging”, “intensity”, “impassioned”, “unflinching resolve” and many other similar superlatives can transfer easily and fittingly to an account of this most recent programme of Haydn (op 74 no 1), Mendelssohn (op 80) and Beethoven (op 59 no 3).

Haydn’s op. 74 quartets are the work of a mature and internationally-known composer which still bear the hallmark of his youthful and genial personality, albeit with touches of the unexpected throughout. Written with an eye to a larger public in a larger space, they can clearly be seen as precursors to the startling and altogether more revolutionary works of Beethoven little more than a decade later.

Mendelssohn’s op 80, however, is a very different creature altogether, and was in fact his final work. The easy and mellifluous confidence of the earlier Mendelssohn is here all but totally occluded by darkness and grief, sparked initially by the death of his beloved sister; it must surely have been infused also by intimations of his own mortality. Dying at the age of 38, Mendelssohn can never really be said to have been an old man in any sense but this music shows his humanity and vulnerability in a way rarely heard in his other works. Played by a group of musicians even younger than him, with such understanding and commitment, it came over with rare poignancy and power.

Only Beethoven could follow such drama, and the last of his famous Rasumovsky quartets proved the ideal choice to complete this concert. Its underlying classical form underpins inconceivably bold innovation and immense creative energy, nowhere more evident than in its amazing and almost reckless fugal finale, and the sheer élan and flair which the Resols brought to this renowned musical racetrack left most of their Crieff listeners speechless in disbelief. Equally hard to credit is that Old Papa Haydn was still alive when it was written – what an amazing thing music is….

Thank you, Resol Quartet. That was another memorable evening.