Sinopia String Quartet
March 26, 2016 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
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Gabi Maas (violin) Daniel Paterson (violin) Daniel Meszoly (viola) Laura Sergeant (cello)
The Sinopia Quartet comprises four of Scotland’s leading young professional string players. Graduates of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Cambridge University and The Guildhall School of Music, they have gained various chamber music, orchestral and solo prizes.
Collectively their experience includes performing with various orchestras and ensembles including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, Northern Ballet, The Hallé, European Union Youth Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra.
Additionally their players have played with several smaller groups including the Scottish Ensemble and the Scottish Chamber Music Players. They have also worked with various leading musicians including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrea Bocelli, Ilya Gringolts, Julian Lloyd Webber, Colin Carr, and have received tutelage from the Lindsay, Brodsky, Chilingirian and Maggini Quartets.
Their collective and individual experience of performing chamber music across the UK and abroad features appearances at festivals including St Magnus Festival, Mendelssohn on Mull, S-o-u-n-d, Sound-Thought, Edinburgh International, Schleswig-Holstein and Musique-Cordiale. The players have performed in various countries including Germany, Italy, France, Norway and Mauritius.
They have various other related interests and commitments ranging from Baroque performance (on both the violin, cello and Swedish-keyed fiddle), traditional Scandinavian music and dancing, to experimental classical music and modern theatre installations. They also work for RCS MusicWorks and Live Music Now Scotland which connects the elderly and disadvantaged young with live music.
This concert is supported with funding from Enterprise Music Scotland.
“Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet (Op 76 no 4) happens to have an apt nickname for a concert opener and Sinopia’s freshness and spontaneity were a sure match for its every mood. With Frank Bridge’s Three Idylls (Op 67) the craftsmanship and assurance of the mature Classical master was replaced by a shifting tonal canvas of different textures and expressive characters from the early Twentieth Century – quite modern music for its Edwardian times and here most sympathetically explored and expounded.
After the interval, listening to Schubert’s monumental “Death and the Maiden” Quartet (Op 14) it was difficult not to reflect that the composer’s most sublime and beguiling effects can often be achieved only by stretching every limit of his interpreters’ abilities. Most appropriately, then, it turns out that Sinopia is actually the name of a dark reddish-brown natural earth pigment, widely used from classical antiquity to the Renaissance. The Italian painter and writer Cennino Cennini described it thus: “ ….and this colour is lean in character. It stands working up well; for the more it is worked up, the finer it becomes”.
Schubert’s whirlwind finale certainly had these players fairly worked up by the time they finished, but the result was pretty damn fine.” – Howard Duthie, The Strathearn Herald
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Current Repertoire:
BARTOK Romanian Dances
BORODIN String Quartet No. 2
BRAHMS-String Quartet in B flat major Op 67
BRIDGE Three Idylls for String Quartet
DEBUSSY String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
GLAZUNOV – Five Novelettes
HAYDN String Quartet in D Minor, Op 76 no. 2 “Fifths”
HAYDN String Quartet in Bb major, Op. 76 no. 4 “Sunrise”
HAYDN String Quartet in D major, Op. 76 no. 5
HAYDN String Quartet in C Major, Op 20 no. 2
HAYDN String Quartet in G Minor, Op 20 no. 3
HAYDN String Quartet in G Major, Op 33 no. 5
MARTINU String Quartet No. 3
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in E-flat-major, Op. 12
MOZART String Quartet in G major, K. 387
RAVEL String Quartet
SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No. 8
SCHUBERT String Quartet in D Minor ‘Death and the Maiden’
STRAVINSKY Three Pieces
VASKS String Quartet No. 4
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