Doric String Quartet; Timothy Ridout viola

The Doric String Quartet, observes Gramophone, treats ‘Mendelssohn as red-blooded successor to Beethoven’. Joined this evening by consummate chamber musician Timothy Ridout, hailed by Le Monde for cultivating ‘a style of playing that is both totally free and accomplished’, they continue to deepen their connection to the composer’s music with a performance of his youthful String Quintet No. 1. The Dorics open with Stravinsky’s edgy Three Pieces, thrilling miniatures composed in 1914, and Haydn’s fabulous Op. 74 No. 2, symphonic in the breadth of its ideas.