Doric String Quartet & Lloyd Van't Hoff
Doric String Quartet & Lloyd Van’t Hoff
Presented by Musica Viva
Adelaide Town Hall
Thursday June 25, 2026
“Sniggers and cold silence.” That’s how Benjamin Britten described the reception of his Three Divertimenti for String Quartet at the premiere in 1936. Innocuous though these pieces sound today, the first audience evidently had trouble accepting their mild modernism. Like other young composers, Britten had a hard time being taken seriously. But many youthful iconoclasts are ultimately absorbed into the upper echelons of British society and end up with a medal or a title; hence, Baron Britten. The Divertimenti aren’t very serious works, but they are clever and made an enjoyable starter before the main meal was served.
Thomas Adès has many points of contact with Britten, having been director of the Aldeburgh Festival for a decade, and Britten Professor of Music at the Royal Academy. In Alchymia (2021) he dives into the mysterious world of alchemy, generally considered a pseudoscience; but quantum physics may be called pseudoscience at some time in the future. Be that as it may, the pursuit of the Philosopher’s Stone (now known by most people through Harry Potter) and the transmutation of base metal into gold – these are metaphors. The transmutation sought by alchemy is the transformation of the self, if you believe Carl Jung. Although I have no direct evidence that Adès is a Jungian, it does make sense to me that the transformation of musical material that happens throughout Alchymia is not just a technical device of composition but a metaphor for a psychological transformation, with mystical overtones. For this performance, the Doric String Quartet was joined by Lloyd Van’t Hoff, playing that rather rare instrument, the basset clarinet. Adès has a remarkable for ear for sounds; his music, it seems to me, is more about sound than about ‘notes’. This excellent performance distilled the essence of the music, revealing its subtleties and vividly imagined timbres. The second movement, The Woods So Wild, was truly a delight.
The first Razumovsky Quartet was described by Theodor Adorno (does anyone read him anymore?) as “one of the greatest chamber music works in the entire literature.” Adorno believed that this period of Beethoven’s music was the highest point of the classical era, when a perfect synthesis of content and form was achieved; however wonderful the music that came after, that synthesis has never been equalled. Whether you agree with that proposition or not, there is something remarkable about this music.
The Doric String Quartet has a very distinctive sound, which they have cultivated over years, and maintained in spite of changes in personnel. You can see the dynamic interaction between the players onstage and feel the intensity of their engagement with the music, yet the outcome often shows a degree of restraint and introspection that is unexpected. When applied to the first Razumovsky, the effect is thought-provoking, as though the music is looking inwards rather being ‘performed’. Perhaps this is a case, as Adorno wrote, “for which language simply provides no other concept than that of the sublime.”
Lloyd Van’t Hoff returned to the stage at the end for a beautifully played encore, the larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. This answered a question I had asked myself before the concert: is it possible to have a concert for clarinet quintet without Mozart’s Quintet? Based on the evidence, the answer appears to be “no”. I’m sure that’s the answer the audience wanted.