Review: Armida String Quartet in Chichester show "remarkable tightness and precision"

By Phil Hewitt
Published 4th Mar 2023, 09:05 BST
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Armida String Quartet – CHICHESTER CHAMBER CONCERTS, At the Assembly Rooms, Chichester. Review: Bob Connell_

Armida String Quartet: Martin Funda (violin), Johanna Staemmler (violin), Teresa Schwamm-Biskamp (viola), Peter-Philipp Staemmler (cello)

The young but highly experienced Armida String Quartet gripped and transported its audience with the third string quartets of Schumann and Brahms, flanking the UK premiere of the Second String Quartet by the Serbian composer Marko Nikodijevic. Named after an opera by Haydn, the German Armida Quartet showed a remarkable tightness and precision while interpreting the subtle emotional style and the stretching of form in the Schumann and Brahms and were entirely at home in Nikodijevic’s sternly modern work.

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The Armida made the Brahms and Schumann seem big and important, without compromising their private inwardness, and revealed to us raw, visceral music of the young Serbian, supremely achieved in a live performance.