Let me start by declaring an interest: I have been an admirer of the Lindsay Quartet since long before I came to live in their homeland of Manchester. Whilst they are acknowledged as an international quartet of the highest calibre, they have always nourished their roots by giving regular series of recitals around the north of England. It is, then, a pleasure to salute them on their twenty-fifth anniversary.
All the performances on this welcome tribute disc are taken from BBC concerts either in St John's, Smith Square, or in Studio 7 in New Broadcasting House, Manchester. As a result, there are occasional extraneous noises but nothing that detracts from the quality of the music-making. The disc reveals the wide musical interests of the Lindsay Quartet. While their cycles of the quartets of Beethoven, Bartok and Tippett are well-known, here—with the exception of the Adagio from Barber's Second Quartet—they are playing music which is little-known but in which they firmly believe.
The two earliest performances on the disc show their long commitment to British music. Andre Tchaikowsky's Second Quartet was recorded in 1978 when the composer was still alive. Although better known as a fine concert-pianist, his small output of compositions (there is, I know, a particularly striking Piano Concerto) has attracted considerable critical attention. His Second Quartet is a passionate and lyrical work in three movements which are played without a break. The central Passacaglia is a wonderfully haunting movement which reminds us not only of the composer's Polish background but of his love for the music of Beethoven and Bartok. Hugh Wood's Third Quartet, on the other hand, falls into a single movement full of grand and striking gestures. After a fragmentary opening, there comes a scherzo-like section after which the work blossoms into a grandiloquent slow final section in which the Lindsays play their hearts out.
That quality of commitment has always been a hallmark of the Lindsay Quartet's performance and it comes over in the quartets by Dag Wiren and Samuel Barber which make up this excellent disc.'