The opening concert of the 2023 Bradfield Festival of Music allowed its audience to experience in practice something that might otherwise be limited to a thought experiment: what happens to a string quartet when its leader is replaced at short notice? The Doric String Quartet’s founding first violin, Alex Redington, was indisposed. Fortunately, rescued by the availability of Johannes Marmen (whose Marmen Quartet was last seen in the Sheffield neighbourhood three months ago), the concert was able to go ahead, albeit with a completely new programme. However, as cellist John Myerscough pointed out, one benefit of this disruption was the chance to experience two Haydn quartets on the same occasion, something of a rare occurrence. The last time I encountered such a thing was in the days when the Lindsays used to programme whole evenings of Haydn here in Sheffield. That the concert was not an unalloyed success was, perhaps, due to an initial mutual unfamiliarity in this most intimate of line-ups, but by the end of the evening the four players engaged with Haydn’s subversive, cross-accented humour with a unanimity that brought cheers from the audience.
Of the two Haydn quartets on the programme, the opening C major Op.50 no.2 came across with the greater restraint. In some ways it presents us with quite cerebral music, even if the set’s dedication to the cello-playing Frederick William II of Prussia meant there needed to be the occasional public display of prowess in the cello part; in the slow movement’s central section Myerscough dispatched these flamboyant bars with animated panache. There were occasional moments of slightly loose ensemble, particularly in the chattering chromatic interaction of all four parts in the Allegro assai finale, but there was no doubting the Dorics’ commitment to the work’s serious wit.
After the interval, in the B flat major Op.64 no.3, the bigger gestures and more obviously ‘public-facing’ extroversion of this later work found the Dorics to be completely at home. They were truly excellent here, from the asymmetric rhythmic disruptions of the opening bars where Myerscough’s cello was on playfully galumphing form, via the almost anarchically undanceable Menuetto – Allegretto third movement, to the finale in which Haydn starts with what feels like an emphatic closing cadence before gleefully pulling the rug out from under our feet time and time again. It’s a performance such as this one that makes the case, were it ever needed, that experiencing Haydn’s music is manifestly good for one’s health.