Coffee Concerts

The Corn Exchange,  Brighton Dome, Sunday March 16 2014   

Andrew Comben, who books the players for the coffee concert series, usually manages to choose players who are already in England, perhaps performing at the Wigmore Hall a day or two before or after their trip to Brighton. That wasn’t the case with the Szymanowski, who had flown in from Warsaw the morning of the concert. That may explain the slightly shaky start to Haydn Quartet Op. 33 No.1: the ensemble was wayward; the balance between the instruments was lopsided, the cello too heavy against very light tones from the violins; and a few fast passages were fluffed. They did settle down but I continued to have difficulties with their playing.

It was a very expressive reading of Haydn. The phrasing was beautifully crafted but at times too romantic for me; Haydn’s music is very much of his time and that was the eighteenth century. Playing it with too much expression strains the music beyond what it can bear. Similarly, the frequent changes of speed unsettled me. And above all, the players imposed little pauses between phrases, losing what is for me the glory of these quartets: long lines of exquisitely delicate music, always surprising the listener with changes of theme or key, while keeping everything rhythmical and understated, as though to say that everything was all right with the world. I have noticed that other Eastern European quartets play Haydn as the Szymanowski does, so it’s not right or wrong but a personal preference.

What didn’t work, for me, in the Haydn worked in spades in Szymanowsky’s Quartet No.2. This work plumbs many emotions but joy is not one of them: things are not all right in Szymanowski’s world. The first movement, muted throughout, is tender and achingly expressive, the second turbulent and disturbed, the third sombre and sad. I suspect that Szymanowski would have disapproved of my applying human emotions to a description of his music; he considered that “art stands above life, penetrates the essence of the universe”. But we have no other words to use. Now the quartet’s playing was quite wonderful, the balance perfect – those dark cello tones adding so much – the whispering lightness of the violins quite hair-raising. Such expressive playing made me feel that this was the only way to play this piece, every note was so convincing.

After the interval came the Dvorak G major quartet Op. 106. It’s a happier piece than the Szymanowski but it calls for playing that is just as expressive; and it was. If Dvorak has a weakness it is that he is prone to repeat a motif over and over again, like two tennis players, each at the back of the court, hitting the ball to and fro, waiting for an opening to emerge. The playing was so lyrical, at times tender, at times passionate, that for once I didn’t mind how long it went on.

I liked the way the Quartet looked; each man was clearly a character in his own right. They looked very at ease on stage, ready to enjoy what they were about to play. Friends behind me, however, commented that a trip to a barber, followed by a trip to a tailor, plus the purchase of a metronome, might have been a good idea. I was only prepared to agree about the metronome, and then only for Haydn. I would travel some way to hear them play anything from Beethoven onwards provided they play, and look, just as they do now.

Incidentally, that lovely encore was “Melody” by Myroslav Skoryk. Type ‘Skoryk’ into Youtube and you can see the piece played by the Szymanowsky Quartet themselves. 

Andrew Polmear

 

 

 

The Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, Sunday 23 February 2014

 

Odd programming, I thought, as I prepared myself for this concert. With over 200 years of piano trio writing why choose two pieces from the same country, written in practically the same year: the Haydn trio in D (Hob XV:24), and the Beethoven C minor Op 1, No.3? And why call themselves Isimsiz, which means ‘nameless’ in Turkish? The pianist is Turkish but ‘nameless’ seemed a bit short on imagination.

Well, it turned out that this trio is not short on imagination. The Haydn was played with delicacy, elegance, and precision. Every note and every line was exquisitely phrased. They captured what to me is the essence of Haydn: he explores to the limits the possibilities that arise from a simple opening theme (or two). He’s not (usually) probing the depths of the human soul, he’s probing the depths of what was possible musically. There is no dramatic gesture; instead there’s the intricacy of a beautifully constructed game of chess.  I find that immensely satisfying and always finish listening to a piece by Haydn with a smile. But not everyone finds that: a friend remarked in the interval that they’d found it ‘light-weight’. That’s a very interesting comment, and I think it comes from a “Romantic” viewpoint. Haydn was a product of the Age of Reason and he was not trying to express emotion. His dynamics range from very soft (pp) to very loud (ff) but he wouldn’t have wanted his music played too emphatically. It’s ‘light-weight’ in that sense but there’s nothing bland about the way he explores themes, key changes, changes of rhythm, and how he manages to return to where he started at the very moment when, after so much invention, you need the comfort of home.

So would the Isimsiz play the Beethoven in the same way? Absolutely not. Suddenly, everything was drama, emotion was to the fore. Changes of dynamics were violent, phrasing was intense, vibrato, which had been sparing in the Haydn, was everywhere. Double forte really was very loud, pianissimo very soft. On the page, the two pieces don’t look that different. Interpreted as they were by the Isimsiz they were worlds apart. Beethoven gained a huge amount from Haydn (although he was loath to admit it) but he used Haydn’s legacy for a completely different purpose: he reflected the age in which the French Revolution had already occurred, and he pointed to what would be called Romanticism. It was all about emotion.

I’ve never heard that point made, in a single concert, so clearly, so musically, as the Isimsiz made it. Brilliant programming!

The Schubert B flat trio is a glorious work and the Isimsiz did justice to it. I don’t have so much to say about it because it’s not so open to different interpretations. The joyous bits were joyful, the slow movement achingly beautiful, the minuet appropriately mischievous…  I was very interested in something the violinist, Pablo Benedi, said afterwards: “usually when we play it, it comes out more serious. Today it came out more joyful”. That captures something of the excitement of live performance; even the players don’t know how it’s going to turn out on the night.

 

The Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, Sunday 19 January 2014

Just do not take these Coffee Concerts for granted. This one on Sunday may well prove a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the eight performing players – let alone for we in the audience of just over 200. The chance to hear Schubert’s Octet anywhere in live performance comes extremely rarely. Opportunities outside London are even scarcer.

Octets of two violins, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, bassoon and horn do not have enough music with which to earn a living, so such line-up has to be specially assembled. The Dome and Strings Attached both wanted to present this box of musical wonders, so London’s Royal College of Music named four of their Soloists and asked the string quartet of lead violinist Alessandro Ruisi, who is still an undergraduate at the College, to join forces.

Needless to say, their full rehearsal at the College last week was their first playing of it in ensemble, Sunday their first public performance, and moreover, as confirmed by Alessandro’s cellist brother Max, they don’t know if they’ll ever play it again. Thus differs our musical world from that of 1824 Vienna.

The commission by a clarinettist Count in the household of a famous musical patronising Archduke (Rudolf, of Beethovenian fame) produced this work which is consequently the least performed among Schubert’s closing major output of his heartbreakingly short life. Modelled on the correspondingly young Beethoven’s Septet, which topped the Viennese pops both in hall, chamber and street, this Octet not only overshadows that Septet, it beats into a cocked hat Schubert’s own now embarrassingly popular Trout Quintet.

Here is another Schubert work of ‘heavenly length’, to quote Schumann, and it followed the Ruisi Quartet’s strikingly immediate, committed, rounded and direct reading, before the interval, of Haydn’s C major member of his pivotal six Opus 20 ‘Sun’ Quartets. With music making of such impact and quality, this was no late breakfast of music at 11am. It was already a feast.

The audience was seated only three quarters in the round because the octet members needed to be in U-shape. At their backs, consequently, was much empty, unpopulated Corn Exchange space which enhanced the acoustical resonance of both the Haydn and the Schubert, and created a romantic aural setting for Finlay Bain’s French horn.

Schubert inevitably gives every instrument its chance to sing but he has twin lead vocalists in the first violin and the clarinet. And in Elaine Ruby, with a cascade of curly light brown hair, we glimpsed maybe a future star of the instrument, conveying all Schubert’s loving clarinet language and rattling into moments of bravura challenges which lend this work many of its fizzing moments.

My seat was only a stride away from my being able to reach out and touch the back of the chairs of Ruby and of bassoonist Sophie Robertshaw. To be in the same room as this music, never mind this close to its performers and looking over their shoulders at their scores, is the quivering excitement and privileged opportunity open to everyone attending these Coffee Concerts of chamber music. All seats are unreserved.

Between them, Ruby and Robertshawe have college access-scheme experience with four London Orchestras while Bain has played already with the LSO and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. All three wind players are English.

The young Ruisi are on a scholarship study of two years with the Maggini Quartet in Wellington. The brothers Ruisi are half-Italian, second fiddle Guy Button, who spoke an audience introduction to the Haydn, is English, and violist Anisa Arslanagic, the quartet’s female member, is half Bosnian.

There are six movements in the Octet. Just to be there listening to the first, in its flesh, I am certain had its own intense emotional experience for each listener. The feeling conveyed by the ensemble in the slow second movement was all pervasive with all eight musicians marvellously on the same page. In the next, Spanish double-bass player Rodrigo Moro Martin, ex-Menuhin School and already a concerto soloist, joined exuberant forces with cellist Max Ruisi in the all-dancing Scherzo.

Then came variations on one of Schubert’s own songs. Next, in the Minuet, the trio gives its theme to the bassoon. It’s amusing, and Robertshawe’s voicing drew irresistible smiles across the faces of Moro Martin and Bain.

The substantial finale, was one that no one present wanted to end. Chris Darwin’s enriching programme notes see grief in its slow introduction. Schubert was using the same device as Beethoven in his Septet, to throw into the relief the merriment coming next. But Darwin’s thoughts remind us that, if Beethoven was composing during the onset of permanent deafness, it was not the termination of his world in quite the same way as Schubert’s syphilis was about to extinguish his.

The next Coffee Concert brings more Schubert in unusual and to-be-relished instrumental combination: another late work, his Bb Piano Trio – along with those by Haydn (in D Hob XV24), Beethoven (C minor of Opus 1) and Schubert (Bb). The ensemble appearing on February 23 (11am) is the Trio Isimisz.

The series concludes on March 16 (11am) with the Szymanowsky String Quartet in Haydn (Opus 33 No 1), Szymnanowski (Opus 56 No 2) and Dvorak (Opus 106 No 13).

Richard Amey

Brighton Dome Corn Exchange, Sunday January 19, 2014

Sunshine, no wind, and a new young quartet, whose leader is still a Masters student at the Royal College of Music – and he looks the oldest of the four. So how does the next generation play Haydn? Somewhere between baroque and romantic; if anything nearer the baroque. They used little vibrato, and played unslurred notes in a detached ‘baroque’ way. But they followed Haydn’s dynamics which are not baroque at all. So, in the first movement, they brought out the forte that Haydn requested for the tumultuous second theme against a background of mezzo forte and piano.

Haydn’s opus 20 No.2 was written in 1772, only 22 years after the death of Bach and 27 years before Beethoven’s opus 18 quartets. So it may well be historically correct to play it this way. The more important question, however, is, did it work? Yes, I think it did. The lack of vibrato brought out the stillness and sparseness of the piece, above all in the cello solo at the start of the second movement. In this they were aided by the Corn Exchange acoustic. When empty it’s a nightmare for the players, as the quartet found when they practiced earlier in the morning, but with an audience it becomes resonant, warm but with no fudge: every sniff can be heard. So this sparse way of playing sounded even more austere than usual. If I had to chose one way of playing Haydn I don’t think this would be it – I like a more lyrical flowing style – but I’m pleased to have heard this quartet and feel they brought out new aspects of the piece. They also coped with the considerable technical difficulties, although am I right to say they came apart for a moment in the extraordinarily difficult fugue that is the last movement?

After the interval the Ruisi were joined by other students of the Royal College of Music for Schubert’s Octet. This hasn’t in the past been a favourite of mine: I’ve heard it played too often where the strings have been swamped by the wind and brass. This performance was a revelation. The clarinet set an opening mood of delicacy that characterised the whole performance. Strings, wind and horn blended together with an intimacy that was exquisite. All eight players phrased as though they had been playing together all their lives. In fact they achieved this on just three rehearsals. Joy and anguish, tenderness and high spirits, they were all there in this understated, refined, masterly performance.

Andrew Polmear