Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E flat (1823); Scherzo from Four Pieces Op.81; String Quartet in E minor Op.44 No.2 plus to follow Mendelssohn Roundtable, with Consone Quartet & Laura Tunbridge
The blurb of the Consone Quartet’s web site says that they are the ‘first period instrument string quartet to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists, (and they) are fast making a name for themselves ……Formed at the Royal College of Music in London, the Consone Quartet launched their professional career in 2015”. It’s the first time I’ve heard them – or indeed heard of them when I bought a ticket for this concert
When the first of the pieces to be performed started started – a gentle reflective piece, perhaps with hints of Haydn and Mozart – I forgot in the first five minutes that this was a historically informed quartet and performance and thought the group lacked attack and volume – but this of course is the effect of gut strings and old bows, which prioritise tone colour over loudness; I also felt that there were times when the players didn’t seem quite together – this too was an aspect of period style whereby players might say take different approaches to a crescendo/accelerando – the principle being they have to hit the next bar line on time but can take different ways of getting there. The players in the interesting talk afterwards referenced orchestral players performing Nimrod under Elgar doing something similar on the famous recording. One thing I didn’t hear them doing – but they said they were doing it in the hour or so of performance, as they noted in the talk – was swooping from one note to the next as an expressive tool.
The 14-year-old Mendelssohn’s quartet to be frank is not that interesting and the stand-alone Scherzo from his last year feels as though it needed to be placed within a larger context.
Much the most satisfying piece in the concert was the Op 44 no 2 quartet, which is a much richer piece – full of that very specific early Romantic sound common to Schumann, Weber and Mendelssohn. The Quartet was composed by Mendelssohn in 1837 and premièred the same year on 29 October 1837 at Leipzig with great success, and published as a full score in 1840. The piece is part of the Op. 44 set of 3 string quartets that Mendelssohn dedicated to the Crown Prince of Sweden. I have a recording of the Op 44 nos 1 and 3 but not this one, which I must rectify. Wagner said that ‘water flows from Mendelssohn like water from a public fountain’. That is definitely too harsh but maybe I could sign up to an amended statement which transferred the source of the water to a warm, soothing bath – and who doesn’t like those from time to time………The first movement in particular is memorable and very enjoyable.
After the concert there was a talk about Mendelssohn’s chamber music, with the quartet joined by the academic Laura Tunbridge, an Oxford-based expert on 19th and 20th-century music, Robert Schumann, and opera.
John's musical journey 