It’s a very welcome return to Skipton Music for violist Shiry Rashkovsky (Trio Klein, February 2022). For this concert, Shiry joins forces with the Solem Quartet to perform two viola quintets by Felix Mendelssohn and leading British contemporary composer, Errollyn Wallen - the latter, entitled ‘Lencten’, specially commissioned by Shiry and first performed in spring 2024.
Praised for their “immaculate precision and spirit” (The Strad) and “cultured tone” (Arts Desk), the Solem Quartet has established itself as one of the most innovative and adventurous quartets of its generation. A 2020 awardee of the Jerwood Arts Live Work Fund, the Solem Quartet takes its place amongst some of the UK’s brightest artistic voices. Since winning the Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble Competition in 2014, the Quartet has built a strong following. They enjoy a busy concert schedule, ranging from international tours to performances at venues such as London’s Wigmore and Queen Elizabeth Halls, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, Perth Concert Hall (subsequently broadcast by Radio 3) and the Tung Auditorium in Liverpool. They are Quartet in Residence at the University of Liverpool and regularly appear as guest teachers across the UK.
To find out more about the artists see Solem Quartet & Shiry Rashkovsky
Photo credits: Bertie Watson & Krystian Data
With kind support from The Railway, Skipton
Light and Shade at Skipton Music
The third concert in Skipton Music’s 2024-25 season featured the Solem Quartet with the viola player Shiry Rashkovsky in a wonderfully varied programme of string quartets and quintets.
The programme opened with the string quartet by Henriëtte Bosmans, a Dutch pianist and composer who lived through the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam and wrote much of her music at that time. The Solem Quartet’s lyrical and passionate performance will have made many converts; the influence of Debussy is obvious but Henriëtte Bosmans has a distinctive and appealing voice, especially in the fast and rhythmic final movement.
The next piece, Errollyn Wallen’s LENCTEN (Lent) for string quintet, was commissioned by Shiry Rashkovsky and receiving only its third performance. Your reviewer has to confess that he found this difficult to appreciate at first hearing, with its succession of five slow movements and relatively little variation. The partial reprise of the opening plainchant-like movement at the end of the piece would have been more obviously effective if there had been more tension or contrast in between. But we must be grateful to Ms Rashkovsky for her enterprise in commissioning this and other contemporary pieces, and to the ensemble for giving Skipton audiences the chance to sample them.
After the interval the ensemble were on more familiar ground with the first of Felix Mendelssohn’s two quintets, a sparkling and exuberant piece written when he was only seventeen. This was again a wonderfully committed and musical performance, with much deft interplay between the five players; it was especially pleasing to see and hear the violas enjoying their share of the limelight for once! Altogether a deeply satisfying end to an intriguingly varied concert.
Charles Dobson