Reviews

'Performances of Works that Represent the Summit of the Artform'

30 November 2023

The Sacconis have been together now for 21 years, making them one of the UK’s longest-running quartets. To celebrate the milestone they have finally allowed themselves to set down their long-developed performances of works that represent the summit of the artform: Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and Beethoven’s almost contemporaneous C minor Quartet, Op. 131.

The players have a notable consistency of tone, perhaps partly thanks to the fact that the three higher instruments are all by the influential 20th-century Italian luthier from which the quartet takes its name; in any case, it takes its lead from the sweetness of Ben Hancox’s first violin. The performances are closely recorded, making for a feeling of directness and intimacy rather than spaciousness, and a focus on nuanced choices of tone colour – such as the breath-like sound at the beginning of the Schubert’s slow movement, almost evoking an accordion. Elsewhere this work sounds tautly wound, the playing crisp and punchy, the inner rhythms measured and precise, each voice clear – it’s an interpretation of calculated drive rather than abandon. 

The Beethoven initially unfolds with a sense of inevitability, and little ruffles the surface in the first movement, but in the Variations that all changes, and in the fifth of the seven movements the players make much of the exaggerated pizzicatos and the abrasive effects at the end. A dramatic finale wraps up another detailed – and ultimately very satisfying –performance.

ERICA JEAL, BBC Music Magazine, November 2023

‘We just love what we do’

15 November 2023

Here are the Sacconis in conversation about their life 21 years together:

‘We just love what we do’: 21 years of the Sacconi Quartet in The Strad

Discerning playing at Wigmore Hall

31 July 2021

The Sacconis approach to Purcell – two Fantasias and the G Minor Chacony – was sober and probing: there was a sense that profound interpretative preparation and reflection had been undertaken, and that, with the heavy work despatched, the music could now be freed to speak with directness and potency.

And so on to Ravel… Hannah Dawson shaped the transition to the second subject exquisitely (and, if anything, her discerningly shaped repetitions, and gentle give and take, were even finer the second time round), and I loved Berridge’s pianissimo fifths which were like sighs of fulfilment between Hancox’s and Ashwell’s entrancing unison melody.

CLAIRE SEYMOUR, Seen and Heard International, July 2021

A fizzing programme of contemporary classical music at Nottingham’s Lakeside 4****

22 October 2018

The Sacconi String Quartet are clearly completely committed to Fitkin’s music, as made evident in their mesmerising performances of Recur and Servant, both pieces of startling energy and power, using minimalist techniques as a starting-point but achieving an entirely individual voice.

All this plus the Sacconi Quartet on brilliant, concentrated form in Philip Glass’s second String Quartet made for an unusually stimulating concert which the enthusiastic audience won’t forget in a hurry.

WILLIAM RUFF @ReviewsGate October 2018

Gramophone Critics' Choice

11 December 2017

Of all the discs I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing, the recent chamber/vocal disc of Dove’s music stands out head and shoulders above the rest. It is a recording that I frequently return to. Mark Padmore ‘owns' In Damscus; as no one else could, while Charles Owen and the Sacconi Quartet show Dove’s lighter touch in the effervescent Piano Quintet. A joyous release.

MALCOLM RILEY, Gramophone, Dec 2017

BBC Music Magazine

17 October 2017

Both Padmore and the Sacconi Quartet, who have a major expressive role as accompanists, are at their finest in ‘Soon, we will be free’, the serene, lyrical heart of [In Damascus]…pianist Charles Owen joins the Sacconis for the Piano Quintet, his crisp, incisive playing making a particular impression in the rhythmically buoyant outer movements

BBC Music Magazine, October 2017

Gramophone Recording of the Month

1 August 2017

Seldom does a mixed vocal and chamber programme such as this hang together so perfectly...[In Damascus] was tailor-made for Mark Padmore, who summons up every iota of his immense interpretative powers to steer us through this reflective testament. This important release cannot be recommended too highly.

MALCOLM RILEY, Gramophone Recording of the Month, August 2017