Doric String Quartet & Allison Bell - Brett Dean: Epitaphs, String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

Australian composer and violist Brett Dean has won many prizes for his orchestral and chamber compositions, including the most renowned of them in 2009, the Grawemeyer Award. Today his works are performed all over the world and highly praised for their aplomb and power of expression as well as their ready accessibility to listeners. The three works featured here were composed between 2003 and 2013 and are all Premiere Recordings. They highlight the empathetic side of Dean: if Eclipse is an evocation of the refugees saved during theTampa Crisis, the five movements of Epitaphs are individual obituaries for lost friends of Dean's. A Viola player wiith the Berln Philharmonic for fourteen years, Dean joins the Doric String Quartet in the latter, a string quintet with two violas.

In the Second String Quartet, Dean presents Shakespeare's Ophelia not as a passively suffering victim but as a feistier personality, full of passion and agility. This is echoed by the great variety of vocal facets required of the soprano here. Young yet already internationally famous and much awarded, Allison Bell will perform next year at Shakespeare's 400th Anniversary Gala, directed by Simon Callow at the Royal Festival Hall in London.


It is impossible to talk about the chamber music of the Australian composer Brett Dean without mentioning that he was principal viola of the Berlin Philharmonic. Inevitably he understands string textures from the inside, with compelling results. The excellent Doric Quartet rise to the challenges of these elegiac works. Eclipse (String Quartet No 1), particularly timely, conjures the despair of the boat people rescued from the Indian Ocean by the Norwegian freighter Tampa in 2001, then denied admission to Australia. The three movements flicker between light and dark, turbulence and calm. Five Epitaphs offer moving portraits of five dead friends, including the conductor Richard Hickox. The Quartet No 2, And once I played Ophelia (2013), has a part, too, for soprano (Alison Bell) which began as the seeds of an unwritten Hamlet opera. Tense, tender and original, it's a tough but rewarding listening. **** –Observer , 6/9/15

These recent works by the Australian composer are infused with haunting, anguished themes.Financial times Sep 4, 2015 /// All three works get powerfully immediate readings from the Doric Quartet, continuing its varied schedule for Chandos, with Alison Bell fearless in the Second Quartets histrionic writing. Excellent sound, decent annotations and a valuable addition to the Dean discography. –Gramophone,Oct'15

The most obviously successful work here is Quartet No.2,'And once I played Ophelia', effectively a dramatic scena. Its soprano soloist is no mere extra voice but the leading protagonist. Alison Bell's genuinely affecting performance is backed by the Doric Quartet's expressionist scampering and sustained harmonies, the strings occasionally coming to the fore in the manner of a Schumann-style song postlude. Performance ***** Recording ***** –BBC Music Magazine, Nov'15

TRACKLIST
'Epitaphs' for String Quintet
01. Only I will know
02. Walk a little way with me
03. Der Philosoph
04. Gyorgy meets the Girl Photographer
05. Between the spaces in the sky
'Eclipse' (String Quartet No 1)
06. Slow and spacious secretive
07. Unlikely Flight
08. Epilogue Slow and spacious Flowing
'And once I played Ophelia' (String Quartet No. 2)
09. Fast breathless
10. Hushed
11. Fast agitated
12. Extremely still
13. Slow austere

PERSONNEL
Doric String Quartet:
Alex Redington (violin)
Jonathan Stone (violin)
Hélène Clément (viola)
John Myerscough (cello)

Alison Bell (soprano)
Brett Dean (viola II)