REVIEW - Courtesy, Daily Echo

Bournemouth Chamber Music Society, Talbot Heath School

The incandescent ending to Sibelius’s String Quartet in D minor “Voces Intimae” left a burning desire for an immediate repeat. The Dante String Quartet’s engagement of its other worldly timbres and hallmark scurrying triplets in a highly polished account sent the BCMS audience home with a glow of gratitude.

Central to the work was the superbly crafted Adagio, here exquisitely played through to its final, whispering chord. The buzz of excitement generated at the opening of the last movement, built to a headlong charge in a breathtaking celebration of its centenary.

The intimacy of Smetana’s String Quartet No 1 ‘From My Life’ is very personal. Connoting various aspects from his youth through to the trauma in his later years.

The Dante’s players, Kyrisia Osostrowicz and Giles Francis, violins, Judith Busbridge, viola and Bernard Gregor-Smith, cello gave this powerfully characterised piece the voice of reminiscence.

The central Polka drew deeply-felt playing; passionate and rustic. The violin’s high harmonic E arrests the finale’s Bohemian dance, indicating the onset of deafness.

For domestic delight within the confines of home music-making, nothing could be lovelier than Haydn’s String Quartet in C, op 20 No 2 with the Dante Quartet playing this gorgeous work to perfection.

Mike Marsh