PARK LANE GROUP CONCERT, PURCELL ROOM, 9 JANUARY 2002

The Observer
“The exceptional Doric String Quartet - average age 20 -… gave a ravishing and soberingly mature account of Zemlinsky’s Third Quartet.”

The Independent
“Searing account [of Zemlinsky’s Third Quartet]”
“Alert rapport and flexible expressive response… made for compelling listening.”

The Times
“ Witty, winsome première of [Martin Butler’s] Two Little Folk Games.”


PARK LANE GROUP GOOD FRIDAY CONCERT, PURCELL ROOM, 18 APRIL 2003

The Strad, July 2003
“Good Friday was an apt day for [the Doric Quartet’s] performance of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross in its string quartet version. In concert the work can be an unforgiving experience for players and audience alike, yet the Doric’s solid commitment and remarkable concentration brought Haydn’s drama and religious fervour vividly to bear.

There was an anguish and declamatory expression in the Introduction, the substance of a small string orchestra in the first-movement Largo and impressive communication of a mutually shared conception throughout. The dramatic momentum seemed only to increase in the seventh movement, where the players’ enthusiasm took flight, creating one of those rare and compelling moments of delicious near-danger. The Doric unleashed the awesome Earthquake finale with ripping power and precision.

Without a doubt this was a stirring performance, but there were hints that the group’s highly developed ensemble work was still being ‘worked at’ rather than spontaneously achieved. Despite this, it’s a cause for excitement that a group at the start of its career can attack such a taxing work with this degree of success.”


WIGMORE HALL, JANUARY 12 2004

The Daily Telegraph, 14 January 2004
“ This was a particularly good day to be at the Wigmore Hall, with a lunchtime recital given by a cellist at the top of the tree and an evening concert by a sapling string quartet of terrific accomplishment and healthy growing potential.

The Doric String Quartet was formed as recently as 1998, but has been studying in all the right places and steadily building up a concert curriculum vitae. The average age of the four male players is 22, though the performances here, given under the auspices of the Park Lane Group, spoke of much deeper maturity, both in terms of cohesiveness and stylistic sensibility.

There was great technical finesse in a challenging and idiomatically wide-ranging programme, embracing Haydn, Zemlinsky and Mendelssohn, with spot-on intonation, liveliness of ensemble and clean articulation.

The Doric, though, has clearly thought about things. The professionalism does not merely create an all-purpose gloss. In Haydn’s E flat major Quartet Op 64 No 6, there was a palpable feeling of exploring the complexities of texture for the music’s wit and compositional wiles, all harnessed with impetus and energy yet governed by Classical poise.

In Mendelssohn’s A minor Quartet Op 13, the Doric acknowledged the music’s well known debt to late Beethoven, but at the same time gave it a Mendelssohnian deftness and flourish.

Zemlinsky’s homage to Alban Berg in his String Quartet No 4 was a real tour de force here, impressive in its contrapuntal richness and grief-laden gestures, but equally in the Doric’s use of its tonal palette to colour the music and characterise it with sweetness or fury, combative-ness or burlesque as the sense demanded.

This was a really fine concert, interestingly programmed and exceptionally involving in the way it was played. The Doric is a quartet to watch.”


CHESTER FESTIVAL, JULY 2004

Manchester Evening News, 23 July 2004
“Great understanding of the ambivalence and mystery of [Beethoven’s Opus 127...] the Dorics will be among the big names before long.”


WEIKERSHEIM, GERMANY, SEPTEMBER 2004

Fränkische Nachrichten, 11 September 2004
“Heartfelt interpretation full of feeling...”