Clarinet & strings: Coleridge-Taylor & a new Jago Thornton piece in the Sacconi Quartet's Sunday concert at Conway Hall with David Campbell

Jago Thornton

Jago Thornton, Shostakovich, Coleridge-Taylor; Sacconi Quartet, David Campbell; Conway Hall Sunday Concerts
Reviewed 28 September 2025

Coleridge-Taylor's early masterwork paired with a new piece for clarinet and strings by Jago Thornton, commissioned as a pairing and inspired by the cityscape known to both composers.

The Sunday concert at Conway Hall on 28 September 2025 featured the Sacconi Quartet (Ben Hancox, Hannah Dawson, Robin Ashell, Cara Berridge) and clarinettist David Campbell in programme that culminated in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Clarinet Quintet in F sharp minor and began with the premiere of Jago Thornton's Study in Submersion for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned as a partner for Coleridge-Taylor's quintet. Between the two, the quartet played Shostakovich's highly personal String Quartet in C sharp minor Op. 110. Before the concert, I gave a preconcert talk looking at Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's early life and training with background to the creation of his quintet and his best known work, Hiawatha.

Named for outstanding twentieth-century Italian luthier and restorer Simone Sacconi, the Sacconi Quartet celebrate they 25th anniversary next year, and still feature the original line up. The four players first got together whilst studying at the Royal College of Music. 

Jago Thornton lives in South London not far from where Coleridge-Taylor lived and his new piece takes its inspiration from the area, from its rivers and from ideas of the landscape that has been lost. In three movements, each is named for a lost aspect of London's rural landscape, Wandle, Fleet and The Great North Wood and the piece was accompanied by three poems on these themes by Emily Potter-Thornton. The river Wandle still exists, wandering through South London, often neglected. Wandle began with a series of hesitant string duos, two violins, viola and cello, over which the clarinet produced a gently undulating melody that was reminiscent of English pastoral. As all five instruments joined together the music became more complex without losing the sense of the undulating clarinet line, and after a climax things unwound.  The Fleet river is now lost, restricted underground. Fleet was fast and vigorous, with furious strings and a passionate clarinet line over. Whilst the intensity of the music died down, the energy did not and one particular highlight was a lovely duet between clarinet and cello. The Great North Wood referenced the woodland that once covered much of South London. The music began deep and mysterious, the music constructed of timbral effects rather than pitched motifs. The clarinet line rose gradually, with the strings doing similar so was had an intense clarinet over strong string harmonies and textures. Things disintegrated after the climax, leaving the music to evaporate except for a final violin gesture.

You could feel the English lineage of Jago Thornton's music and the links to the past meant the work fitted the programme well, yet there was also a sense of Thornton's own voice too. 

Shostakovich's Quartet in C sharp minor is an intriguing piece. Written in a relatively short space of time whilst the composer was working on a film in Dresden, it is full of personal references and quotations. The autobiographical nature of the work links to statements Shostakovich made at the time and the idea the work might be some sort of epitaph. It is in five movements, though the Sacconi quartet's performance made them feel all of a piece and the whole had moved in an arc from the Largo opening, to the Allegro molto and then unwinding slowly through the Allegretto into the final pair of Largo movements where the quotations included material from the opening.

Yet, though the quartet's performance was striking and intense, they brought a rather consoling quality to the various musical quotations. The opening Largo with its weaving of DSCH motifs into considered yet intense counterpoint had a haunted quality, contrasting with the fierceness of the Allegro molto full of attack, vigour and anger which was almost unrelenting, only relieved by the references to earlier works which floated in and out. The Allegretto was lightly dancing yet with a bleak tone that rendered the music unnerving. The music turned darkly powerful, though the players also gave us a feeling that it was struggling to stay together, gradually unwinding towards the return of the opening material and an ending that featured a remarkable stretch of sustained playing, bleak and barely there.

Coleridge-Taylor's Clarinet Quintet is an early work, he was just 20 when he wrote it though he had been studying at the Royal College of Music for five years by then. He wrote more chamber music, but none after 1896 and what later works we have for him are in other genres. There was an interesting energy to the opening movement with a restlessness that at times felt as if we'd plunged into the middle of something. The influence of Dvorak was clear yet there was a sense of the English tradition too. The clarinet melody in the slow movement had a distinctly Dvorakian cast with strongly characterised strings, then the third movement was all eager energy as if something was coming. The fourth movement began with strongly characterised strings and a lyrically engaging clarinet. The middle of the movement featured some big folk energy, almost typically English in style, but the end was all vigour and energy. Throughout the work we sense Coleridge-Taylor the chameleon as he moved between influences, Dvorak to English music that approached Vaughan Williams.

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