Review by James Munro
Edinburgh Quartet
OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 2 November 2008
The Edinburgh Quartet
AS THEY approach their golden anniversary, the Edinburgh Quartet has added Inverness to the cities in which they present a series of concerts. The performance on Sunday afternoon was the first of three in which they will commemorate two bicentenaries, the death of Haydn and the birth of Mendelssohn. Each concert is programmed to open with a string quartet by Haydn and close with one by Mendelssohn, with a contrasting quartet as the filling in the sandwich.
It would appear that the programmers at Eden Court have found a niche by offering chamber music in the OneTouch Theatre on a Sunday afternoon, as a respectably sized audience turned up, with not a few faces that are unseen at other chamber music concerts. And if the applause at the end was not excessively generous, the comments of the audience as they left the theatre were certainly complimentary.
Over the past half-century the Edinburgh Quartet have established themselves as something of an institution on the Scottish musical scene, with a distinct following. Obviously none of the original members are still featured, but three of them, Philip Burrin, Michael Beeston and Mark Bailey have become very familiar.
By contrast, the first violin’s chair has changed regularly in recent years. The current incumbent, Tristan Gurney, is of a younger generation than his colleagues, probably no bad thing as this dominant role demands more energy than the other three important, but inevitably supportive, parts.
The Haydn quartet featured in this opening concert was the first from the third set which Haydn dedicated to Joseph Tost, the 18th century Viennese violin virtuoso. Haydn is considered to be the father of the string quartet with a rich catalogue of works. This opener from Opus 64 is not the most familiar, and although Michael Beeston gave a brief introduction, some programme notes would have been helpful.
At the outset Tristan Gurney’s animated example was followed, but as the demands of stamina took over, it became obvious that there was still work to do on the ensemble of the players. The quartet was not helped by the acoustic of the OneTouch Theatre.
For many types of show, especially when there is amplification, there is no problem. But when we are listening to a small group of natural instruments, then some assistance is needed to generate reverberation and to project the sound out into the audience, rather than it expanding into the roof space. The overall result was a performance that seemed more pedestrian than inspired.
Zoltan Kodaly was a friend and contemporary of Bela Bartok, and both found inspiration in Magyar and Hungarian folk music. Kodaly is best known for his choral music and for his orchestral dances, but his second string quartet, although short, is packed with folk melodies. This seemed to encourage the Edinburgh Quartet to raise their game and this enjoyable work received a convincing performance.
After the interval came Mendelssohn, and his Quartet in E flat major, opus 12, a teenage work, but impressively accomplished nonetheless. In it, the young Mendelssohn starts to move away from the influence of Beethoven and develop his own character. Of special note, and most pleasingly played by the Edinburgh Quartet, is the second movement, a scherzo-like canzonetta, and the four players extracted every ounce of feeling from the long drawn-out final bars.
The next visit to Eden Court by the Edinburgh Quartet will be on 22 February 2009, when their programme will again feature quartets by Haydn and Mendelssohn, framing the wonderful ‘Quatuor a cordes’ by Maurice Ravel.
© James Munro, 2008
