Strathearn Music Society Review – Resol String Quartet

Wed 14th February 2024

Originally formed by a group of friends and fellow-students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2018, the Resol Quartet is already a well established group with an impressive record of public performance, prestigious awards and important work in outreach and education. They take their name from the Catalan word meaning “reflection of sunlight” but “re” and “sol” are also equivalent to the notes D and G in tonic solfa, and “Damn Good” might be an additional way of describing them, on the evidence of this latest SMS concert. Mozart and Shostakovich formed the basis of an emotionally and technically challenging programme which opened with Puccini’s elegiac “Crisantemi”, a five-minute lull before two heavy-duty classics of the repertoire. Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet (no 19 in C major) derives its nickname from the opening 22 bars of slow-moving and sometimes alarming shifts of harmony which led its early listeners to wonder if the composer had made a mistake. What follows is, however, in no way a difficult or contentious musical experience for the audience; rather it rejoices in the full radiant bloom of a bright and consonant C major and displays the full gamut of Mozart’s compositional skill to form one of his finest and most satisfyingly-proportioned works. In the Resols’ capable hands it sparkled and shone with brilliance and intensity.

To Shostakovich, after the interval, and a very different kind of intensity. Impassioned, unsettled, angry and sometimes bitter, his Third Quartet was written in the wake of World War II and conveys an encyclopaedic array of feelings which can tax listeners as well as players. The composer, already with nine symphonies to his name, turned to the more intimate medium of chamber music to express more personal sentiments and, while this work has enough purely musical interest to stand on its own merits as a piece of abstract expression, it also has a topical and programmatic nature born of the hardships of post-war life in the Soviet Union. With moments of haunting desolation amid hints of unsettling  march rhythms and ghostly dances it reflects in 2024 a lot more of our current global zeitgeist than Shostakovich could perhaps ever have foreseen himself. A serious enterprise indeed for any ensemble to take on, and the Resols were unflinching in their resolve and commitment to its message, their musical accomplishment and maturity matched by an objective and unaffected approach to the job in hand. Result: a powerful and memorable performance. There’s a lot more to this piece than can easily be absorbed in one hearing, and those wishing a second immersion and deeper understanding might like to know that the Resols will be repeating this exact programme in St John’s Kirk of Perth on Sunday 24 March at 3.00 pm.