Another great concert (I’m sure I’ll come across some duds at some point, but this wasn’t one of them). The Chiarascuro Quartet was playing two works – the Haydn String Quartet in B minor, Op. 33 No. 1, and the Beethoven String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Op. 130 (so, one of the ‘late quartets – the one that was originally meant to end with the Gross Fuge but which formidable movement Beethoven eventually set aside for a gentler less awe-inspiring ending).
I had heard of – but not heard live – the Quartet, but I was surprised to see they are quite old-stagers, starting life as a quartet in 2005. The things that’s really interesting about the way they play is that they are using period instruments, with gut strings and historical bows. This does make a real difference to the way they sound – they seem, I thought, to be able to create marvellously soft , whispered, pianissimos, and the balance of the instruments sounded somehow warmer and some of the textures more transparently beautiful than with conventional instruments. I was right at the front of the audience with the first violin, Alina Ibragimova, very nearby, and therefore the sound wasn’t necessarily as balanced as other people might have heard it, but I was very struck by the sheer virtuosity and leadership Ms Ibragimova gave to the quartet– she is of course a well known soloist as well as playing chamber music.
The Haydn quartet was, as I have said about others of his quartets, always quirky and interesting. Nothing is ever quite what you expect – the second movement is a scherzo in this particular quartet, rather than a slow movement, and the third movement is a D major Andante, but which also retains something of this sense of the traditional scherzo as well. And the finale is quite dark and edgy, rather than a light-hearted scamper. The Chiarascuro Quartet played it brilliantly, I thought.
With the Beethoven Op 130, the Quartet seemed to make more sense of this work than any other performance I have heard – I think the way they played the complex first movement made me understand the structure a lot more clearly, and in fact the programme booklet was quite helpful in suggesting that the origins of the form of these last quartets could lie in the ‘Divertimento’ tradition much used by Mozart rather than the more traditional form used by Haydn and indeed Beethoven in his earlier quartets. This made me fuss less about having essentially two scherzos and two slow movements in this work and wondering about how each movement related to the others. The playing in the wonderful ‘Cavatina’ was quite beautiful – and helped by the soft tones of those period instruments.
And, poor things – because of social distancing, and having played energetically and with all their hearts and minds for us for 80 minutes, they had to play the same programme again 20 minutes after they’d finished performing for us!! The picture below has a male who wasn’t actually playing as second violin – I am not sure who this was (but she was very good!)
John's musical journey 