"Solem quartet's playing is sensitive, wonderfully blended, incisive where needed, but above all powerfully communicative ... [Finnis' String Quartet No. 3] alternates prayerful movements with others suggesting the human heartbeat – at times gently throbbing, at others irregular and anxious. Finnis’s music is minutely attentive to the careful weighting of harmony and dissonance, so that every bar draws the listener in and feels urgently consequential ... The longest single track on the album is Camden Reeves’s 2019 The Blue Windows (String Quartet No.5), inspired by Marc Chagall’s stained-glass triptych America Windows of 1976. In the composer’s own words, ‘individual planes of harmony overlap, interlock, and blend into one another’. In many ways, this masterfully-paced work feels like a luminescent, mesmerising extension of late Beethoven (a strong influence on Reeves’s music), and its hypnotic beauty is infused with moments of intense dissonance and exquisitely-held single notes which are played with rapt beauty and expertly deployed spareness of tone ... Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now provides a gentle conclusion to a programme of fascinating colours and subtle intensity, vividly captured in Willards Barn, Godalming, by producer/engineer Paul Baxter. With detailed booklet notes by Anthony Friend, this Delphian disc is a welcome exploration of new and neglected repertoire that makes for compelling listening for all lovers of the string quartet genre"

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

"Solem Quartet have produced a thing of beauty with this presentation of music ‘awash with colour’ – most of which is recorded for the first time here ... [Edmund Finnis' String Quartet] catches your breath for all the right reasons ... The quartet could not have fulfilled the colour brief more seriously, or brought closer partnering, more sleek-edged rhythmic handling or sheer confidence. While its tender moments are heart-strings-pullingly good (listen to the delicately luxurious, smokey-toned serenity it brings to second violinist William Newell’s transcription of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now), it’s perhaps most exciting of all in its broad, rich-toned strength – for example, over Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans’s Debussy-esque String Quartet of 1927, which is is a knock-out for the sensual rhetorical freedom with which they articulate its expressionist passion. Add a ravishing guest appearance from Ayanna Winter-Johnson, singing the vocal part she recently added to Earth, her 2018 hymn of wonder to our planet, and yes, Painted Light is awash with colour, whilst also radiating modernity and soul"

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"The Solem Quartet is at the top of its collective game throughout, as if the presentation of this music was propulsive force enough to light the music from within ...The Quartet is joined by the composer as vocalist in Ayanna Witter-Johnson's Earth, The piece is brilliantly written, and equally brilliantly performed. Distinctly soulful, it seems to link to the final item, Both Sides Now - the Joni Mitchell song heard in a string quartet arrangement by William Newell. The way the familiar melody emerges from the texture is simply lovely.Dephian keep on issuing significant discs, and their commitment to both new music and young talent is entirely laudable"

CLASSICAL EXPLORER
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"This CD stopped me in my tracks ... The Solem Quartet has chosen an interesting concept for its first recording on the Delphian label, and in doing so, it has created a stunningly atmospheric disc. It is a mosaic of sound inspired by, and brimming with, colour ... The opening bars of Edmund Finnis Devotionsinsinuate the listener into a world where the music moves in space and immediately draws them into a feeling of timelessness. The music swirls around like a wintery colour emerging and then mingling with mist. The connection that the players create through different powerful emotions—tension, mysteriousness—takes hold, and with such expressive playing and wonderful tonal qualities, the sound of the Solem Quartet produces an eddy pulling the listener into its core with an impressionistic aural painting ... Lili Boulanger’s Noctourne is expressively performed, and still the delights keep appearing. Henriëtte Bosmans’ Quartet is equally hypnotising, with such sensitive and vivid playing from the Solem Quartet. Time seems to linger. The fragility and introspection of the second movement are palpable ... The meticulous attention to detail that the Solems bring to their performance is outstanding. The storytelling is exceptional and matched by superlative Delphian recording engineers ... The disc concludes with Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s Earth, originally part of a 2018 work for string quartet alone, commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet and Sound and Music. The Quartet is joined by the composer as vocalist; her voice is sonorous, and her words a powerful depiction of nature. Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, is heard in an arrangement by the Quartet’s violinist William Newell, and provides a delicate lesson in perspective"

"Perceptions of colour connect each of the works on the Solem Quartet’s new album. The musical styles range from Impressionism (Lili Boulanger) and neoclassicism (Henriëtte Bosmans) to the tonal contemplations of Edmund Finnis and Camden Reeves. Two encores complete a curious but not unengaging programme, one a song arranged instrumentally, the other an instrumental piece which turns out to be a song ... The opening and longest work is Finnis’s Third Quartet, Devotions (2022), cast in eight untitled movements running for a touch over 21 minutes. Do not be fooled by the music’s seeming inactivity, for the insubstantiality is a mirage, the inner workings, derived from the ‘Heiliger Dankegesang’ movement of Beethoven’s Op 132, masked by the instrumental textures’ quiet iridescence ...  Punctuating the programme are three briefer pieces, two of them in deft arrangements by the Solem Quartet’s second violinist, William Newell. Lili Boulanger’s delicate Nocturne (1911), originally for flute and piano, transfers well to quartet as does – surprisingly – Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both sides now’. Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s ecologically minded Earth (2018) – for which she provides the vocal element – adds a further dimension. The performances sound fairly definitive, and Delphian’s sound is excellent"