United Kingdom Dutilleux, Weiner, Schumann, Haydn, Webern, Beethoven: RCMF Quartet (Luke Hsu and Laura Rickard [violin], Marthe Husum [viola] and Rainer Crosett [cello]). URC Church, Romsey, 19.1.2024 and 21.1.2024. (CK)
Dutilleux – Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher
Weiner – Divertimento
Schumann – String Quartet No.1 in A minor
Haydn – String Quartet in D minor, Op.76/2
Webern – Langsamer Satz
Beethoven – String Quartet No.14 in C-sharp minor, Op.131
Excellent chamber music-making returned to Romsey for every week in late January, because of the tireless work and expertise of native violinist Laura Rickard and her buddies. I don’t write ‘tireless’ idly: they carried out six live shows in native faculties, spent Saturday morning working with sections of the Hampshire Youth Orchestra, and nonetheless managed to carry out difficult programmes for his or her loyal viewers on the Friday and Sunday evenings within the high-quality acoustic of their musical house, Romsey United Reformed Church.
On the Friday night the principle work was Schumann’s String Quartet No.1. Schumann’s three quartets was ignored or seemed down on – and significantly this one, seen because the laborious fruit of his intensive research of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven moderately than the spontaneous outpouring of his freewheeling lyrical present. Properly, all I can say is that it didn’t sound like that right here: a drifting downward phrase from the primary violin, echoed by the second, and the magic casements opened. A lot to catch the ear on this opening motion: only a phrase, maybe, as the place the cello briefly performs above the viola. Within the pleasant Scherzo Mendelssohnian sprites come out to play (Mendelssohn is the quartet’s dedicatee); the sweetly ruminative gradual motion – its major theme so suggestive of the gradual motion of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – was movingly performed, and the Vivace finale was attacked with vigour. Simply earlier than the top, Schumann permits us to glimpse one other magical soundscape – hushed excessive violins over a drone on viola and cello: these gamers made positive that this second had its full impact.
The live performance had opened in sensational type with a efficiency by Rainer Crosett of Dutilleux’s Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher for solo cello, written on the request of Mstislav Rostropovich in 1976. Starting tentatively, fragmentarily, this nine-minute piece generates rising power and fervour, requiring expressivity and virtuosity from the soloist over a large compass. Rainer performed it from reminiscence, with complete dedication and conviction – the hallmarks of all of the performances I’ve heard in Romsey. His lucid and fascinating introduction to the piece was an instance of one other characteristic of the home type right here, enormously appreciated by the viewers.
A 3rd common characteristic is the involvement of native younger musicians: a lot of whom joined Laura and her buddies to carry out the Divertimento by Leó Weiner, a recent of Bartók and Kodály. They dispatched this suite of 5 conventional Hungarian dances with taking part in of character and verve – and, within the third dance, with delicacy. They captured the assertive masculinity of the verbunkos (recruiting dance – the best-known one is in Kodály’s Háry János Suite), and the violins executed their high-wire act within the concluding Gypsy Dance with aplomb.
Friday’s live performance was exhilarating sufficient: however Sunday’s reached for the celebs. I ponder what string quartet gamers regard because the Everest of their style: I think about that not a couple of of them would decide Beethoven’s Op.131 in C-sharp minor (Beethoven apparently thought it his biggest work). Extra of that anon. First, we had one other late masterpiece: Haydn’s String Quartet, Op.76/2 (‘Fifths’). The relentlessly creative Allegro was given a dramatic and incisive efficiency – a lot in order that the Andante, gracefully and stylishly performed, appeared a needed rest earlier than the so-called Witches’ Minuet broke in – earthy and fantastical music, the canon between higher and decrease strings lending it a barely unnerving high quality, as if one thing – or somebody – was being intently pursued. The country power of the Vivace finale was vividly conveyed in taking part in stuffed with character.
Earlier than the principle occasion, an sudden deal with. Most of Webern’s music is transient, atonal, elliptical and aphoristic: so it was pleasant to listen to his early, expansive Langsamer Satz (Gradual Motion), particularly when performed as gorgeously because it was right here, the climactic moments attaining a pitch of ardour and depth, even ecstasy.
And so, to the grave and shifting opening of Beethoven’s Op.131: filaments of sound, discovering their manner right into a gradual fugue. These younger gamers, so sensitively attuned to the music and to one another, led us via this ethereal panorama and on, through a quick scherzo and an excellent briefer transition, to the elegant set of variations on the quartet’s core; then out into the daylight of the good Presto, a miniature Adagio suggestive of a world of feeling, and so lastly to the climactic power of the concluding (and conclusive) Allegro. The gamers have been splendidly aware of the music’s altering moods: magnificence, dignity, unhappiness, power – and, the place needed, that Beethovenian grit: music, because it have been, via clenched tooth. It was astonishing – all of the extra so when one considers that the seven actions run repeatedly: nearly forty minutes of unbroken taking part in. Demanding for the listeners, enormously taxing for the gamers. All of them rose magnificently to the problem: Luke Hsu’s taking part in (1st violin) had actual hearth, and their music-making was underpinned by Rainer Crosett’s lucid, expressive and rhythmically alert cello.
A unprecedented live performance. Additionally – a wise transfer by Laura Rickard – the launch of the programme for the Summer time Competition, entitled Of Love and Insanity (24-30 June: click on right here for extra details about the Romsey Chamber Music Competition 2024). It should start with Cello Suites by Bach and Britten at daybreak on the financial institution of the River Take a look at; there shall be string quartets by Beethoven and Janáček, Schumann’s Piano Quartet, Korngold’s Piano Quintet, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and far, rather more. A stimulating mixture of the classical, the modern and the frankly voluptuous. What are you ready for?
Chris Kettle
