Peter Cropper’s death robs us of one of the most imaginative presences in our musical lives. In his later years, that meant chamber music (hear him talking about Mozart in 2010 here) and founding and catalysing Sheffield’s brilliantly innovative Music in the Round chamber music series; but it’s his 40 years leading the Lindsay String Quartet that define his legacy to the musical world.
The Lindsays recordings of Beethoven’s quartets are still among the finest you can hear, testament to some of the closest and most productive musical relationships in string-quartet history: there were just six players who performed with the quartet, with Cropper and cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith founder members from 1965 who were still there four decades later when they finally stopped playing together in 2005.
In memory of Peter, and the magnificent music-making of the Lindsays, here are five recordings of repertoire familiar and less familiar, from Beethoven to André Tchaikowsky, from Mendelssohn to - well, to more Beethoven! - all of it searing with the sense of musical necessity that the Lindsays, thanks to Cropper’s inspirational and charismatic personal and musical leadership, radiated in everything they did.
Beethoven’s String Quartet Op 127: the first of Beethoven’s so-called late quartets; and the first of the three on my list.
André Tchaikowsky’s String Quartet no 2, music of irresistible but feverish expressive energy, written for the Lindsays in 1975
Mendelssohn’s String Quartet no 6: a ferociously intense live recording of Mendelssohn’s single bleakest work from London in 1988
Beethoven: String Quartet Opp 130 and 131
From the archive: February 2001 - Edward Greenfield hails the Lindsay Quartet’s new Beethoven recording
