Performer: Emma Denton

A tasting menu of string quartet movements interspersed with readings made for an absorbing afternoon. 

Guy Johnston and friends in a varied programme of works and arrangements for 12 cellos, joined by soprano Golda Schultz in tender and spirited Villa-Lobos.

The Carducci Quartet’s appearance in the Holywell Music Room marked the halfway point in the Oxford Coffee Concert’s Autumn series. This late-morning concert saw the ensemble pair two D major quartets, from 1781 and 1949. It was the latter which received the more convincing performance, with the quartet clearly more engaged with Shostakovich’s troubled utterance than Haydn’s lean textures.