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Timbre Merchants - Four Star Review
Nick Kimberley, 19th Sept 08 - The (London) Evening Standard
“In terms of both quantity and quality, Schubert's string quartets constitute a major body of work. A shame, then, that for the Chelsea Schubert Festival's only concert dedicated to quartets, the Barbirolli Quartet could find room for just one. On the other hand, you could argue that the nine minutes of his Quartet Movement are so condensed, so focused, that they are complete unto themselves. So it felt in the Barbirollis' performance.
While Holy Trinity's acoustic is bright and forward, the background hum of ventilation and traffic did few favours to quieter passages. Despite that, the Barbirollis' approach favoured bold attack over pristine unity, and the music benefited. If the players captured the fleeting moods of the Schubert, they also got the febrile, hyperventilating energy of Beethoven's Fourth String Quartet. Not that everything was tension and stress; there was a lovely, openhearted lyricism in the third movement, while the finale kicked up its heels with skittish energy.
Without Haydn's example, neither Beethoven nor Schubert would have had such a firm foundation on which to build their quartets. It made sense, then, to open with the older composer's String Quartet no. 65, a work of infectious high spirits. There was a clear sense of shared pleasure in Haydn's bundle of little surprises: a change of tempo here, a momentary pause there. These musicians really search for the right timbre; at one slow passage in the final movement, their combined sonority had the enveloping warmth of an organ.
Debussy's only string quartet made a fitting climax, its sense of structure looking backwards, its sound-world looking to the future. The Barbirolli Quartet invested it with an almost vocal quality, so that the piece unfolded like an opera without singing. Still young, these four women are already players to reckon with.”
Prolonged applause for string quartet is well deserved - Harrogate Festival
Paul Dyson, 08 August 2008 - Ripon Gazette
"This young group promises much for the future"
"a fine performance in which the group's rapport and enthusiasm for playing with each other were both very much in evidence"
Cheltenham Festival - 9th July 08
Geoff Brown 14/7/08 - The Times
“these former students of the Royal Northern College of Music certainly seem Rising Stars to me”
“The Barbirollis should be watched closely"
PLG Young Artists - Purcell Room 9th January 08
Geoff Brown 14/1/08 - The Times
“At birth they were called the Stillman Quartet, after their first violinist. Now the four former students of the Royal Northern College of Music label themselves the Barbirolli String Quartet, a proud Mancunian name. They received a deservedly warm welcome on Wednesday in the Park Lane Group's January bonanza of new talent and new music.
However crowded the field, there's always a place for classical musicians so tonally robust and rhythmically precise. The incisive, rocking patterns of Elizabeth Maconchy's short String Quartet No 13 exactly suited their gifts. Joe Cutler's recent Folk Music proved another canny match, vigorously chugging through riffs and stomps with an attractive populist bent.
The sonic tapestry widened in the major Barbirolli exhibit, Berio's Notturno of 1993; though this too came from the friendlier end of new music, with ghosts of melodies peeking in and out, and fetching crepuscular scurryings. Along with rhythmic precision, the Barbirollis' vast colour range proved vital here. I'd rush to hear this superb quartet again, even if they were called the Cat's Pyjamas.”
Seen and Heard Recital Review - Wigmore Hall 7th April 08
Bob Briggs Music Web International
Barbirolli Quartet and Zephirus, Wigmore Hall, London, 7.4.2008
"This recital is another in the monthly series Monday Platform, which features the best of young artists currently working in the UK, and what an interesting series it has been. Tonight we were introduced to two very different quartets, and what a repertoire there is for both. The Barbirolli Quartet got the evening off to a fine start with a joyous performance of an early Beethoven quartet which, although in his favourite turbulent key of C minor, is full of the kind of high spirits which fill Haydn’s quartets. After this Stillman and Singh changed chairs for the other works and gave us a quicksilver performance of Schubert’s Quartettsatz. As light and frothy as Wolf’s Italian Serenade, this interpretation was full of Italianate warmth and good humour.
Their crowning achievement was a truly great performance of Jánaček’s 1st Quartet. Based on Tolstoy’s novel of the same name, Kreutzer Sonata, in which a man describes how he murdered his wife because he suspected her of having an affair, Jánaček fills the music with high passion, love, tenderness and, ultimately, violence. The four movements are terse and full of event, frighteningly difficult to play and disturbing to listen to. The members of the Barbirolli Quartet played for all they were worth, seeming to live the story in an effort to ensure that we understood the details – and the ultimate inequality of it all.
I often find myself complaining that performances lack a true pianissimo, but not with the Barbirollis. Their dynamic range was so wide that they had us sitting on the edges of our seats to hear their most intimate thoughts and being overwhelmed by their fortissimos. The Barbirolli Quartet is a magnificent ensemble which, tonight, displayed great understanding and insight into the music it was playing."
London - South Bank Centre and Park Lane Group
Peter Quantrill April 08 - The Strad
“Elisabeth Maconchy’s String Quartet no. 13 of 1984 displayed the Barbirolli Quartet’s precision of ensemble at formidable rates of energy (9 January), with well-balanced contrapuntal lines in the outer movements that allowed us to appreciate the unitary nature of this short work...”
“…a superbly realised performance of Berio’s swansong to the quartet genre, Notturno.”
“...Ella Brinch’s viola drew together the strands of a poetry nearing silence, introducing one doleful strain after another that floated away on a breeze of fluttering harmonics and unfulfilled gestures. The Alban Berg Quartet and others have made this a 20th-century classic by imposing themselves upon it, but the Barbirolli’s short bows and careful tentativeness captured something intimate and vulnerable that felt truer and closer to the work’s subtextual settings of the Holocaust survivor and poet Paul Celan.”
Purcell Room 9th January 2008
Anna Pickard - The Independent
“Equally adept in Maconchy's and Cutler's glowing counterpoint and the bone-white, ash-grey Berio, theirs was a well-crafted, emotionally mature performance.”
Barbican Hall 27th July 2007
Peter Grahame Woolf - Editor, Musical Pointers
“A fine and memorable evening at The Barbican, beginning with a visit to the thought provoking exhibition in The Curve .....
Next, two string quartets in the carpeted foyer, given by the international members of The Barbirolli Quartet. This was an intriguing and very satisfying Free Foyer Music event. The audience was at first small, mostly sitting on the floor. A good, sound account of the Haydn, with impeccable tuning and ensemble, was followed by the Beethoven which showed evidence of thorough preparation. A depth of interpretation, and unanimity in execution; no compromise for this Barbican debut! Rhythms had just the right degree of response to the musical narrative, the cellist often taking things a little forward. Beauty of tone predominated, and quiet was often very quiet, drawing in the listeners, but matched by surges of energy for the more dramatic passages and climaxes.”
21st April 2007 - Quartet takes on new name
By kind permission of Lady Barbirolli, the quartet is very pleased to announce that they have taken on a new name: The Barbirolli Quartet. The quartet met whilst studying at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and (individually) were recipients of several RNCM awards named after world-renowned conductor Sir John Barbirolli. He was principal conductor of the Hall Orchestra between the years 1943 and 1958 and a very important figure in Manchester's musical life; the quartet are delighted to be able to reflect their ties with the RNCM and the greater area by way of this association.
Lady Barbirolli wrote in a letter (early April 2007):
"A little while ago the Stillman Quartet asked a friend of mine if they could change their name to the Barbirolli Quartet. They were told that I (Evelyn Barbirolli) would be delighted for them to do so provided that I could hear them play well enough - I am quite crippled at present and cannot move at all - The Quartet most kindly arranged to come to my house and play to me, including, at my request, part of a Haydn Quartet. They came and played and I was truly delighted. Obviously the members of the quartet are all individually expert players, but what gave me such pleasure is that they really played as a Quartet and all seem to want to continue to do so. I have told them that I am very happy for them to use my husband’s name. I wish them well in what is not an easy start. I shall look forward to hearing them again and give them my warmest wishes."
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