Review: Endellion String Quartet, King's Lynn Festival, Guildhall

One of this season’s King’s Lynn Festival highlights was certainly the recital given by the world famous Endellion String Quartet, not strangers to King’s Lynn as it’s cellist David Waterman told us during the evening.

Other members of the Quartet are: Andrew Watkinson (Violin), Ralph de Souza (Violin), and Garfield Jackson (Viola).

The Quartet has performed all over the world, recorded and broadcasted widely and played together with many distinguished soloists and musicians in Festivals and well known venues.

It continues it’s prestigious Residency at Cambridge University which began in 1991.

The concert programme consisted of three masterpieces of the repertoire by composers renowned for their string Quartets: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. All known to each other and supposedly all met. Mozart and Beethoven certainly developed the Quartet medium from the older Haydn’s works, and studied with him.

The fine Endellion Quartet gave superbly accomplished performances of the pieces , as you’d expect . The programme consisted of:

Haydn’s Quartet in G Minor (The Rider), Mozart ‘s Quartet K.421, and Beethoven’s Quartet Op.127. The quality of the playing enabled the audience to concentrate on the lyricism, subtlety and inventiveness of the pieces, Beethoven most certainly transporting the string quartet to a higher, even mystical level, which are the mark of his ‘late quartets’, written in the early nineteenth century.

It’s said Mozart ‘s wife, Constanze, gave birth during the time Mozart was working on the third movement of the K.421 Quartet! Who knows? The music is marvellous anyhow.

I was delighted to briefly talk to the quartet’s viola player, Garfield Jackson about the concert and musical matters after the recital and this concluded a magical evening!

Andy Tyler.