Tag Archives: Australian String Quartet

Faith Court Orchestra

 

 

 

Ben Martin (piano)

Music Auditorium

W.A.Academy of Performing Arts

 

 

 

 

  

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

   

Since Peter Tanfield took over the direction of the Faith Court Orchestra, it has improved so significantly that it sounds like an altogether different – and more proficient – ensemble to that of, say, a couple of years ago.

 

Tanfield comes to Perth with impressive credentials. A former student of Yehudi Menuhin, he was a prizewinner at the Carl Flesch International Competition. He has taught extensively in Britain, Spain and Germany. Tanfield came to University of Adelaide in 1998 to lead the then-Australian String Quartet. He has been co-ordinator of classical strings at WAAPA since last year.

Ben Martin

Ben Martin

 

Tanfield’s direction of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5 was impressive. I had wondered whether tackling this masterwork might have been overly ambitious. In the event, my reservations evaporated only moments into the work.

 

While a uniform tonal sheen in the various subsections of the strings is, on Wednesday’s evidence, still more a hope than a reality at present, and although some of the lower woodwinds need focused work in relation to intonation and tone quality, the overarching, grand sweep of Tchaikowsky’s Fifth was most commendably achieved.

 

Tanfield did wonders in extracting fine detail from his forces, his face eloquently mirroring the emotions he so skilfully coaxed from his young players. It augurs impressively for the FCO’s long-term prospects.

 

I particularly liked the tone of the brass choir, now bold and assertive, now warmly expressive, especially the French horns who gave a most musical account of themselves. A bouquet to Samuel Parry for consistently musical work on the oboe.

 

Ben Martin was soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2. As ever, this prince of the piano did wonders at the keyboard, in an interpretation that was in the best sense lucid, cogent and stylistically apt. It is perhaps quibbling to point out some minor slips in the finale. Certainly, the overall effect was first rate, not least for Martin’s finely honed skill in unbottling the often turbulent genie that lies behind the printed note.

 

As for the accompaniment, one wondered whether the lion’s share of the FCO’s rehearsal time had been devoted to the symphony because there were moments in the concerto when ensemble weakened and entries were tentative.

 

 


Australian String Quartet

Australian String Quartet

Perth Concert Hall

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

The Australian String Quartet’s memorable account of Beethoven’s Rasumovsky Quartet, opus 59 no 3, presented in a year which has seen a number of similar ensembles from abroad making concert tours of the country, leaves one in no doubt at all that the homegrown product is as satisfying to experience as the imported variety.asq

Certainly, the ensemble’s reading of the Rasumovsky work came across with a flair and drive that made for rivetting listening. And the controlled skill with which the fugal measures of Beethoven’s masterwork were offered as the various instrumental lines coalesced and separated was an object lesson in what fine contrapuntal playing is all about.

Now, when Beethoven turned his hand to contrapuntal writing, it invariably bore his unmistakeable musical fingerprints. The same cannot be said of Mozart’s recourse to counterpoint. And while no-one would dispute the quality, clarity and beauty of his ideas in the Adagio and Fugue in C minor, few, I believe, would claim that it sounds like Mozart at his most original. In fact, at times one is left with the impression that it was the result of Mozart attending a séance to commune with the spirit of the departed Bach, taking some advice from this greatest master of fugue – and hurrying home to get it all down on paper. I like to think of the Adagio and Fugue in C minor as Mozart’s homage to his great predecessor.

Music in very different vein – Dvorak’s String Quartet No 10 – was given a performance that very beguilingly underscored the engagingly folksy nature of the writing.

Copyright 2004 Neville Cohn


Australian String Quartet

Australian String Quartet

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Perth Concert Hall

23.3.2004
The Australian String Quartet often leavens its programs with works well off the beaten track – and its first offering for 2004 included two compositions which only very rarely make an appearance on the bill as well as the Perth premiere of Roger Smalley’s Piano Quintet with the composer at the keyboard.

The centenary of Dvorak’s death in 1904 is being marked worldwide by performances of his music. Throughout 2004, the ASQ will be programming a number of his works. Cypresses was originally conceived as a set of love songs, and the ASQ gave us a re-working for string quartet of four of the eighteen songs. Unsurprisingly, they are strong on melody, tenderness and ardour and, despite the youth of the composer, they already provide incontrovertible evidence of Dvorak’s instantly recognisable style; his musical fingerprints are all over it. This set of four miniatures was presented with trade-mark beauty of tone and precise intonation.

As well, we heard Stravinsky’s Three Pieces of which Canticle was especially memorable not least for its evocation of mysterious, creepy, mist-shrouded vistas. And Eccentric, inspired by famed clown “Little Tich” was, at times, reduced to almost Webernian proportions.

Beethoven’s Rasumovsky Quartet, opus 59 no 2 is one of the glories of the chamber music repertoire and the ASQ rose magnificently to its challenges. Adapting chameleon-like to its every nuance, they breathed life and meaning into this masterpiece.

For sheer expressive range and depth, smoothness of corporate tonal sheen and fidelity to the notes,the ASQ are clearly frontrunners in international terms. For lengthy stretches of its performance, the playing was of such lofty standard that it was beyond criticism in conventional terms and needing little more than an acknowledgement of highest interpretative – and technical – excellence. Offerings at this level explain the golden opinions garnered by the ensemble during its tours across China, Hong Kong, Germany and Britain last year.

The program presented at the Concert Hall has been toured through Australia in the company of Roger Smalley who played the keyboard part in his recently completed Piano Quintet,
given its Perth premiere on Tuesday. In common with some of his earlier work, Smalley has taken inspiration from a Chopin mazurka, in this case opus 68 no 4 in F minor, fragments of which appear, phantom-like, in the scherzo. Much of the latter is informed by a sense of urgency; the mood is rather dark, even threatening, with its peremptory knockings as if demanding entry at a door that remains firmly closed.

The overture movement, on first encounter, comes across as an essay in musical turmoil, with note streams that rush this way and that with strongly emphatic statements from the strings. And in the finale, the players presented a series of variations that include a charming, Viennese-type waltz, a scherzo with rapid, high-treble tinklings, a little barcarolle with an intriguing rhythmic lurch and a rather jolly polonaise. But, on first hearing, some of the variations seemed rather too brief, and not allowed sufficient time for their individual characters to register as satisfyingly as might otherwise have been the case.

Copyright Neville Cohn 2004

 


Australian String Quartet with Michel Dalberto (piano)

Australian String Quartet with Michel Dalberto (piano)

Perth Concert Hall

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Mrs Siddons, that greatest of English actresses of the 18th century (and immortalised on canvas by Joshua Reynolds), was said to have had a voice of such beauty and authority that when, on one occasion, she asked for a beer at a tavern, the bartended collapsed in a faint. So far as I know, no-one keeled over at the Concert Hall but the quality of sound produced by the Australian String Quartet was very much in the Siddons category. Certainly, its presentation of Mendelssohn’s Quartet in D minor from opus 44 produced a range of tonal colourings that constantly diverted and delighted the ear.

As well, although there were thought and consideration behind even the meanest phrase; there was nothing in the least academic or dry about the presentation.. On the contrary, there was throughout a sense of adventure and spontaneity about the playing, a remarkable feat of musicianship that allowed the work to flash into life in a way that augured well for the remainder of the program.

The chief joy of the evening was the ASQ’s account of Janacek’s Quartet No 1, known as the Kreutzer Sonata from Tolstoy’s novella of the same name. The composer identified strongly with this story of illicit passion because at the time, then aged 70, Janacek was infatuated with Kamilla Stosslova, a women decades his junior and married to boot. And it was into this composition that Janacek poured his unrequited love for Mrs Stosslova. The ASQ was entirely up to the challenge here, invariably successful in drawing out the work’s enshrined emotions that oscillate between lyrical refinement and an almost palpable sensuousness.

Throughout the work, the ASQ expounded Janacek’s idiosyncratic compositional argument with a musical logic that was irrefutable, thereby drawing the listener ineluctably into the composer’s unique sound and mood world. The finale was exceptionally fine with pizzicato sounding as if ripped savagely from the bodies of the instruments.

Ace French musician Michel Dalberto, who had earlier played Ravel’s Concerto in G with a skill bordering on genius, joined the ASQ in Cesar Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor, a work for which the composer reserved some of his loftiest musical ideas. And the five players, as if drawing inspiration from a shared musical consciousness, were entirely successful in conveying the grandeur and nobility that informs so much of the work.

Performances by the Australian String Quartet have now become an important and much anticipated feature of Perth’s music scene.