THE renowned Maggini String Quartet made a welcome return to Kendal Midday Concert Club in a programme of music by Haydn, Maxwell Davies and Puccini, writes CLIVE WALKLEY.

The concert opened with one of Haydn’s opus 20 quartets, No 6 in A major written in 1772 and nicknamed The Sun since the first edition showed a sun on the title page. By this time, Haydn had clearly established himself as a master of the string quartet genre.

A dominant feature of this quartet is the emphasis Haydn gives to the first violin in the first three movements; the three lower instruments are cast in the role of accompanists for much of the time. This results in a busy part for the leader and Julian Leaper fulfilled this role brilliantly.

But what really caught one’s attention in this and the other two works in the programme was the quality of sound produced by all four players and their attention to detail. The pianissimo playing was magical; also the colouring applied to quiet passages in which the non use of vibrato heightened the effect.

The last movement of this quartet is a tour de force of contrapuntal mastery as Haydn combines three different fugue subjects in all manner of combinations and all to be played sotto voce. All four voices were clearly heard bringing the performance of this lovely quartet to a very satisfactory conclusion.

Next came the eighth of Maxwell Davies’ ten Naxos Quartets written in 2005 and dedicated to Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of her 80th birthday. This is a reflective work built around a theme by John Dowland, a composer much admired by Maxwell Davies.

The opening quiet section was again magical, requiring great bow control from all four players and, again, careful balancing of the parts. Without any foreknowledge of this work it was difficult to follow the structural detail and perhaps a little time could have been spent in offering the audience some signposts to follow.

Finally, we heard a comparative rarity, Puccini’s Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) written in a single night in 1890 after the composer had heard of the death of a friend.

As one might expect with Puccini, the work is full of melodic charm and rich harmonies, romantic to the core. After the intensity of the Maxwell Davies quartet it was an ideal piece with which to finish the concert and showed the versatility of these fine players.