We’d booked to see the Pavel Haas Quartet play at lunchtime at the Wigmore Hall today, but they have had to delay restarting their concert schedule, and so we heard the Škampa Quartet as their truly excellent stand-ins. They played Mozart’s Quartet in D, K575 with considerable finesse and charm and persuasiveness. But what made the concert was a performance of the first of Smetena’s quartets, ‘From my life’. Passionate, intimate, dancing and lyrical by turn, the Škampa played with true heart and soul (and wonderful togetherness). This was a very fine performance indeed. We heard the Pavel Haas play the Smetena last year, and that was perhaps even more remarkable an experience: but the Škampa in their current line-up were definitely more than worth the day trip to London to hear.
I’m mentioning this because you can hear the concert for the next week on BBC Radio 3, here.