An electric performance full of memorable moments

The Attacca Quartet is a Grammy award-winning American string quartet, especially known for their collaborations with Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Caroline Shaw. noisenights are through the noise’s vision for the future of classical music: crowdfunded gigs taking world-leading musicians to iconic independent venues. Together, they make for an electric evening.

It can be very difficult to review a night like this, as so much of it can come down to the individual’s prior relationship to classical music. As someone who is less familiar with this world, the evening had moments of great accessibility but others that felt as if they were flying over my head. 

Something that can be said for certain is that Attacca Quartet are a powerhouse group. The talent oozing from the musicians–Amy Schroeder, Domenic Salerni, Andrew Yee, and Nathan Schram–was virtuosic and inspired dropping jaws and enthusiastic whoops galore. 

The choice of programme was also a smart one, with a combination of versions of well-known tunes and those that will be familiar to the regular fans of the group. I was particularly impressed by the dynamics on display: moments of sweeping romance followed by more experimental picking and stabs. Personally, and surprisingly, it was the slightly more traditional moments which impacted me the most, such as the Ravel String Quartet in F: I. Allegro moderato. As mentioned above, this is perhaps down to my familiarity with this kind of language for classical music–something I lacked in the more surreal, futuristic sections.

I can’t overstate my share of responsibility for my listening experience. After all, there is truth in the adage that we get out what we put in. And it’s certainly true that the passages which went against my expectations still managed to lift the room and occasionally transcend into an unusual ethereality.

One of the biggest takeaways of the night was how great it was to see such a large swathe of young people moving to classical music–a genre often labelled as elitist and exclusive. It’s not necessarily what you’d expect for an evening in a nightclub in Hackney, but that’s exactly why through the noise’s mission is an important one. Access to the arts is in dire need of support, and I for one would recommend turning out for any future noisenight events. You might just find it opens a door.