Presto Music Classical Podcast,
Episode 34: Golden Oldies - The Brodsky Quartet at 50
Founded by four ambitious teenagers in Middlesbrough in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet’s extraordinary fifty-year career has encompassed collaborations with musicians including Sting, Björk and Sir Paul McCartney as well as a whole host of superb recordings of core repertoire from Mozart to Bartók.
It was a great pleasure to be joined by cellist and founder-member Jacqueline Thomas and her husband Paul Cassidy (who became the quartet’s viola-player in the early 1980s) for a whistle-stop tour through the group’s first five decades, not least because the pair had such a profound direct influence on my own development as a young musician growing up in Middlesbrough during the 1990s – in between touring with Elvis Costello and recording a landmark cycle of the Shostakovich quartets, they regularly carved out time to return to the area to coach aspiring chamber-groups and perform concertos with local amateur orchestras, experiences which will stay with me for life.
Join us for a trip down memory-lane, taking in their early days feverishly transcribing Janáček and Shostakovich direct from radio-broadcasts, game-changing encounters with Japanese designer Issey Miyake, Costello and Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar, and the process of documenting the quartet's history in their recently-published twin autobiographies...
Our thanks to the quartet for giving us permission to share this documentary by Holly Cassidy, celebrating their golden anniversary!
Brodsky Quartet, Laura van der Heijden (cello), Julian Jacobson (piano)
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Jacqueline Thomas
Available Format: Book
Paul Cassidy
Available Format: Book
Other recordings referenced in this episode
Brodsky Quartet
Available Format: Presto CD
Brodsky Quartet
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Brodsky Quartet
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Brodsky Quartet
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Brodsky Quartet, Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo)
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Brodsky Quartet, Bob Smissen (viola)
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Brodsky Quartet
Available Format: Presto CD
Brodsky Quartet, Laura van der Heijden (cello)
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
