Sacconi Quartet review – new Freya Waley-Cohen work reveals ensemble at their finest

2026-02-22 - 16:33

Wigmore Hall, London Marking 25 years since their formation, Dances, Songs & Hymns for Friendship was informed by the composer’s observations of the four musicians in and out of rehearsal Founded at the Royal College of Music in 2001, the Sacconi Quartet celebrated their silver jubilee by looking forward as well as back. If Haydn and Beethoven represented the bedrock upon which their musical sensibilities were grounded, it was a newly commissioned work by Freya Waley-Cohen that revealed them at their finest. Impeccably crafted and full of rhythmic and harmonic invention, Dances, Songs & Hymns for Friendship is a six-movement string quartet informed by the composer’s observations of the four musicians both in and out of rehearsal – she even watched them making tea! It opened with Spin, in which bold unison passages dissolved into fragmentary solos. Waley-Cohen’s musical fingerprints here were spicy, but rarely ventured beyond a world that Bartók, for example, would have recognised. It suited the Sacconi’s tightness of ensemble and muscular tone, especially in the lower instruments. Continue reading...