Doric String Quartet, Allison Bell - Brett Dean: Epitaphs; String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

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Doric String Quartet, Allison Bell - Brett Dean: Epitaphs; String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

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Brett Dean is not shy about revealing what his music is ‘about’. Whether inspired by certain individuals (as in Epitaphs), or by an ecological or human disaster (as in his String Quartet No. 1, on the now all too topical plight of refugees), Dean’s works are usually – perhaps invariably – driven by extra-musical narratives. Rather than tease out any innate structural puzzles or tensions, his music typically falls into short little dramatic narratives – no movement on this disc lasts as long as eight minutes, many of them rather less than five.

The most obviously successful work here is Quartet No. 2, ‘And once I played Ophelia’, effectively a dramatic scena. Its soprano soloist is no mere extra voice (as in Schoenberg’s Second Quartet) but the leading protagonist. Allison Bell’s genuinely affecting performance is backed by the Doric Quartet’s expressionist scampering and sustained harmonies, the strings occasionally coming to the fore in the manner of a Schumann-style song postlude. Much of the effectiveness of other works relies on Dean’s colouristic and expressive inventiveness (recalling James MacMillan, though without his knack for sustained lyricism), as well as the listener’s ability to tune in to its emotional soundworld.

Review by Daniel Jaffé, BBC Music Magazine

That Brett Dean was a professional viola player for well over a decade only makes his writing for strings the more idiomatic, and this is nowhere more evident than in the three works on this disc. The First Quartet (2003) considers the ever-topical subject of human displacement – the quietly expectant opening movement accumulating tension as it heads into its successor, the ‘Unlikely Flight’ of its title reflected in a predominantly hectic and aggressive manner whose belated calming makes possible the ‘Epilogue’, with its hinting at a distinct yet tenuous hope. The Second Quartet (2014) shares a not dissimilar trajectory, the presence of solo soprano (text by Matthew Jocelyn after Shakespeare’s Hamlet) as she unfolds a portrait of Ophelia resulting in a sequence graphic in its alternation between manic violence and unworldly calm. That same calm comes to the fore in the final two movements, where the vocal fragments are gradually subsumed into an almost motionless quartet texture that ultimately recedes beyond earshot.

Between these pieces (though opening the programme), Epitaphs finds Dean no less adept in writing for string quintet. The title alludes to the memorial nature of the five pieces – each of them inscribed to a specific person. Here the interplay of stasis and dynamism is more clearly defined, culminating in a tribute to the conductor Richard Hickox which draws on elements of its predecessors in an expressively wide-ranging discourse that again disperses into virtual silence. All three works get powerfully immediate readings from the Doric Quartet, continuing its varied schedule for Chandos, with Allison Bell fearless in the Second Quartet’s histrionic writing. Excellent sound, decent annotations and a valuable addition to the Dean discography.

Review by Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone

Australian composer Brett Dean’s long professional life as a violist (he served 14 years in the Berlin Philharmonic) surely explains the highly refined mastery with which he writes for strings, even when employing extended techniques. The first movement of his String Quartet No. 1, Eclipse, begins with slow moving patterns that often use harmonics. Tremolos increasingly enter the landscape and reach a climax before launching into a jagged pizzicato episode. The second movement is vigorous and energetic, with hints of a jig and lots of microtonal interaction before concluding quietly. The almost panoramic stillness of the first movement permeates the third.

Based on texts by Matthew Jocelyn after Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Dean’s String Quartet No. 2 makes a stronger, more original impression in its first three movements, although again he opts for a slow, freeze-framed ending. The amazingly agile soprano soloist Allison Bell’s madcap quasi scatting, aspirated syllables, and astounding leaps into the vocal stratosphere work hand in glove with Dean’s looser, more uninhibited string writing.

Dean ends the string quintet Epitaphs more or less the same way as in the quartets, but there’s attractive material elsewhere, such as the fourth movement’s Bartókian asymmetry and colorfully varied bowings and articulations, and the first movement’s widely spaced melodic doublings between violin and cello flanking wiry inner-voice movement.

Given the composer’s supervising presence and, in the quintet, his actual participation as second violist, one assumes that the Doric String Quartet’s extremely accomplished and polished world-premiere recorded performances are as authoritative as you’ll get. Yet what ultimately closes the deal is Allison Bell’s phenomenal vocal artistry.

Review by Jed Distler, Classics Today

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Doric String Quartet, Allison Bell - Brett Dean: Epitaphs; String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

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Doric String Quartet, Allison Bell - Brett Dean: Epitaphs; String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

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Doric String Quartet, Allison Bell - Brett Dean: Epitaphs; String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

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