Reviews

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

The Guardian

17 June 2017

The beauty of the piece, for tenor and string quartet, is its restraint. It doesn’t sensationalise, get maudlin, moralise or politicise. The words are direct and the music respects that. The performance does, too: clear, focused playing from the Sacconi Quartet and lucid, unswerving narrative from tenor Mark Padmore. The rest of the disc is lighter but always with that trademark Dove economy: the Sacconis sound relaxed and bubbly in the 2001 quartet Out of Time and pianist Charles Owen joins for the Piano Quintet, intense and light-filled.

KATE MOLLESON, The Guardian, June 2017

The Scotsman

1 November 2016

Music review: Sound Festival, Aberdeen

...All change, though, for Saturday’s lunchtime concert from the UK-based Sacconi Quartet and harpist Ruth Wall (*****), which included the world premiere of a sound-commissioned, bracingly energetic new work from UK post-minimalist Graham Fitkin. Recur for string quartet and harp was a gem of a piece, sparkling with plucked textures, its four-note earworm of a tune cast in endlessly inventive new contexts, funky and foot-tapping yet also full of piquant emotion, and it got a crisp, bright, thoroughly assured premiere performance.

DAVID KETTLE, The Scotsman, November 2016