Gildas Quartet
Tom Aldren and Gemma Sharples (violins)
Christine Anderson (viola) Anna Menzies (cello)
Wednesday 25th March 2026
St. Mary’s Church, Edward Road, Dorchester
Dorset County Museum Music Society CIO Charity Number 1187277
Programme
Three Idylls Frank Bridge (1879 – 1941)
I: Adagio molto II: Allegretto poco lento III: Allegro con moto
Frank Bridge is often referred to as the teacher of Benjamin Britten, a praiseworthy position to hold but one which does little justice to the fact that he was a first-rate composer himself. From the turn of the 20th century onwards he produced a steady stream of works, most notably songs, piano music and chamber music. His four fine string quartets are at the heart of his work in this last genre but there are also a number of works for other instrumental groupings. His earliest works are in a pleasingly mellifluous style which gradually gained in technical mastery and expressive range until the cataclysm of the Great War which radically altered his whole approach to his art. Through the 20s and 30s he explored darker emotional areas with a technique which became much more forward looking.
The Three Idylls were composed in 1906 and, like much of his music of this period, are an interesting blend of his easy-going early style together with hints of the more searching and expressive language he was moving towards.
Quartet in F major Opus 18 No.1 Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
I: Allegro con brio II: Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato III: Scherzo – Allegro molto IV: Allegro
It seems curious that a young man as impetuous and ambitious as Beethoven, who had been composing confidently and successfully since his mid-teens, should delay producing a symphony or a string quartet until he was thirty years old, these being two branches of composition to which he was later to contribute so memorably. It has been suggested that his reason for this was a reluctance to be seen to be rivalling his teacher Joseph Haydn, but sadly the relations between the older master and the young firebrand were never close and Beethoven, although he was later to acknowledge his debt to Haydn, in the immediate wake of the lessons showed little respect for the elderly master. But whatever the reason, Beethoven’s first mature chamber works were piano quartets and string trios, the latter a medium considered by many to be far more challenging to a young composer than a string quartet would be. These early piano quartets are good, if hardly outstanding, pieces but the trios are major contributions to what has never been a very popular medium.
What were Beethoven’s circumstances at the turn of the 19th century? He had left his native Bonn and moved to Vienna in 1792, quickly becoming known as a composer but more so as a performer quickly engaging the interest of several Viennese music-loving aristocrats who arranged performances of his works in their residences, paid him handsomely for his services when he performed for them and their guests and even provided him with accommodation. Although by now firmly based in the Austrian capital, his fame was spreading as he was already touring as far afield as Prague, Dresden and Berlin. By 1801 he was able to write to a friend:” My compositions bring me in a good deal… People no longer come to an arrangement with me; I state my price and they pay up”. But sadly just as his career was blossoming, other letters written at this time speak of his hearing “becoming weaker and weaker”; the great problem which was eventually to overshadow his whole life was already in evidence.
Although the Opus 18 quartets did not appear in public until 1801, they were being worked at over the preceding three years. It seems that they were not composed exactly in the order in which they are labelled, the F major designated No.1 actually being finished last. In sustained work in this medium Beethoven was clearly learning as he went along; in June 1799 he sent a first version of the F major quartet to a violinist friend, only to write two years later “Don’t let anyone see the quartet as I have greatly changed it; only now do I know how to write quartets properly”. Indeed the final version of the work does display an appreciation of the possibilities of quartet writing in its harmonic audacity, the skill with which a seemingly throw-away motif can be worked, the contrapuntal richness with which four equal partners can discuss the material and the emotional depth which can be found in slow movements; Beethoven admitted that when composing this adagio, he had in mind the vault scene in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. But how much further along these paths was he to explore in his seventeen further quartets.
Quartet No.8 in C minor Opus110 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)
I: Largo II: Allegro molto III: Allegretto IV: Largo V:Largo
Dmitri Shostakovich burst upon the musical scene at the age of nineteen with his brilliant first symphony. But the political and social situation in Russia then and subsequently was far from stable and from early in his career he encountered disapproval from the authorities, disapproval strong enough to thwart his career and cause him to readjust his musical utter-ance in order to comply with opinions passed down from the political elite. At times performance of his work in Russia practically dried up, but his out-standing gifts were reluctantly recognised by even the most bigoted (and cloth-eared) political leaders and embargos on his music were ultimately lifted, though at the expense of the natural growth of his musical language.
The eighth of his fifteen string quartets was composed in 1960, one of many difficult periods; his growing international fame meant that he had to be given leading positions in Russian musical bureaucracy, but this obliged him finally to join the Communist Party and had to deliver on the international stage deeply uncongenial speeches written for him. This depressed him greatly and explains the prevailing mood of this quartet, ostensibly dedicated to ‘the victims of war and fascism’, is really his own desperate emotional and spiritual situation expressed in music. Soon after he had completed it, a leading Russian quartet played the work to him but then had to quietly leave as the composer had broken down in floods of tears.
The Gildas Quartet was formed originally at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2011, quickly earning a secure place on the national and international stages. The quartet performs regularly at leading festivals and concert series throughout the UK and also as far afield as China and South Africa. But aside from this work in the formal concert field, they are also deeply committed to playing in unusual settings and in ways designed to draw in listeners unused to chamber music by the imaginative power of their playing.
For our next concert on 22nd April, given by the oboist Ewan Miller with pianist Tomos Boyles, we shall be returning to the Corn Exchange in High East Street.