Mozart: Trio in E flat, K 498 (‘Kegelstatt’) with violin in place of clarinet; Violin Sonata in E flat, Op 18 (Strauss)

Cristina Vaszilcsin (violin), Peter Garrity (viola), Catherine McKay (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wednesday 25 November 2009   

These three players have been tantalizing us with Strauss’s youthful, highly coloured violin sonata, with performances of just the first two movements (at Paekakariki) and of the Improvisation movement alone (at the Friends of the NZSO concert a week earlier); I’d heard both. Here at last we heard the whole thing, though it was not without its curiosity even here.

As the players prepared to start the second movement (Improvisation), Cristina dashed off to get her mute; she then played her first two notes – alone; Catherine got up from the piano and went out and when she didn’t come straight back Cristina left too. Time passed.  Concert organizer Marjan Waardenberg went out too and we waited; one or two people left, but the first movement had been so compelling that almost all remained seated, hopefully.  A good five minutes later they all returned and calmly began the second movement.

Catherine had had a nose-bleed.

It was the energy and rapport displayed by these two players that was striking; one sensed a strong shared commitment to and sympathy for the sonata which is an early work, written aged about 23, and not universally admired; it is given to exploiting both Strauss’s fecund compositional gifts, a romantic imagination fed by a growing admiration for the aesthetic of Wagner and Liszt; I found it curious that I was here and there reminded of Franck’s sonata, even though Strauss could hardly have known it since it was written only a year earlier.

Even though marked Andante, the first movement creates a passionate impression that belies the actual underlying tempo, and it was this impulse and thrust that animated the performance most strongly. The second movement suffered not the least from the pianist’s brief ailment; in fact it was as if the problem inspired an even more rhapsodic, expansive performance, filled with graceful phrasing and ecstatic piano filigree supporting the violin’s more legato lines.

The third movement was the place for even more highly romantic effects, endless scales and decorative arpeggios played as if they were much more than flashy gestures, then a middle section where the violin became playful in a perfectly wholehearted way. There was always the sense of impassioned momentum that sustained a constant awareness of the larger picture.

They had begun the concert with Mozart’s wonderful clarinet trio, with the clarinet replaced by Vaszilcsin’s violin. Not only did the violin quite seduce me with a feeling that this might well have really been the sound Mozart had in mind, so natural and gorgeous was it, but the different environment also lent the viola greater distinction than it had, at least in the traditional sounds lodged in my mind, alongside the clarinet.

In the Rondeaux allegretto (last movement) the violin’s summery joy and warmth led to a feeling of deep, if very histrionic, soulfulness which the viola reflected in its lovely duo with piano in the middle section. I am given to exclaiming about performances that are unlikely to be excelled this year, but this was such a performance, of two wonderful works that are too rarely heard.

 

John Psathas – Abhisheka

Michael Norris – Exitus

Juliet Palmer – Egg and Tongue

Ross Harris – Variation 25

Jack Body – Three Transcriptions

New Zealand String Quartet

(Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman, violins,

Gillian Ansell, viola, Rolf Gjelsten, ‘cello)

Te Marae, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington

Sunday November 22nd 2009

This programme of string quartets by New Zealand composers is being recorded by Atoll Records, the enterprise serving as a well-deserved tribute to not only the composers but also the New Zealand String Quartet for their advocacy of home-grown music over the years. And although a number of these works have been recorded before by the same ensemble, it’s a splendid idea to bring together the group’s updated “take” on pieces that have either already are or else show signs of becoming classic genre works in the ever-burgeoning stockpile of New Zealand compositions. Pieces like John Psathas’s Abhisheka have already developed something of a “performance history” which suggests a welcome longevity, as does Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions (though might the latter work benefit from a rather more mood-inducing title, such as “Three Travelogues” or something?). No such equivocation hampers Juliet Palmer’s intriguingly-titled but lesser-known Egg and Tongue, which dates from 1994, a deliciously “layered” piece bringing impulses, gestures and styles from various sources. The other two works on the programme were both 2009 premieres from Nelson’s Adam Chamber Music Festival, each piece suggesting in its own way a fruitful gestation of advancement in terms of future audience appreciation.

John Psathas’s Abhisheka represented the composer’s first sustained attempt to come to terms with through-composed stasis and spaciousness, though works such as “Waiting for the Aeroplane” (1988) featured episodes of similarly-conceived stillness and inward reflection. Here, the players beautifully “grew” the sounds out of the silences, subtly and unhurriedly exploring the piece’s different colours and textures along the way, and blending exotic melodic lines with faraway ambiences whose hypnotic spell seemed to transcend time and space. Reflecting the composer’s interest in writings by a Buddhist mystic at the time, the music suggested a creative fusion of impulse with reflection, encompassing occasional melismatic movement alongside a deeper, and perhaps inexplicable peace – the abhisheka of the title refers to the process of sprinkling and pouring into a receptive vessel that ineffable state of calm acceptance so alien to normal human “modus operandus”.

Juliet Palmer’s viscerally engaging Egg and Tongue made a great foil for the inward intensities of John Psathas’s work – though it was interesting how again episodes within the music set motion against long-breathedness in a different kind of way. The work suggested something bubbling constantly just beneath a surface whose “skin” would occasionally rupture and fragment – but never catastrophically, the impetus of accented movement being gathered in as quickly as the patternings irrupt. I felt there was an almost “hoedown” element trying in places to get out, its efforts at liberation giving rise to wonderfully startling sonorities, the crunching of four-note patternings against “jamming” pizzicati; while at other times held violin notes exchange like resonating bells, then, in the midst of a “battle of pizzicati” the same instruments excitingly swoop and soar like air-raid sirens. I loved the kaleidoscopic aspect of the piece, its patternings, mirrorings and (in places) volatile dissolutions, not the least of which was its wraith-like conclusion, the violin tones seeming to dissolve in the very air.

Ross Harris was one of two composers present at the Te Papa Marae to hear their work being played (Michael Norris was the other). Ross spoke about the impression made upon him by hearing Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” played by a string quartet, so that his meditation, also for string quartet on the 25th Variation of Bach’s work seemed like a natural outcome of the experience. Variation 25 began by underlining the original work’s lyrical qualities, then introducing downwardly chromatic harmonies to “charge” the music with a kind of late romantic aura, filled with grave, scented beauty. Impassioned accents and phrase-beginnings vie with more circumspect passages, before a  closely-worked scherzando-like episode invigorates the music, then gradually pares away the excess, until the notes take on a more pointillistic aspect as the piece explores different harmonic directions. A lovely solo from the violin, underpinned by the viola’s voice, calmly finishes the work.

While New Zealand composers often draw direct inspiration for their work from their immediate physical surroundings, they’re as liable to respond to wider cultural stimuli representing universal themes and preoccupations – so it is with Michael Norris’s Exitus, an exploration of four different geographical and cultural conceptions of afterworlds. The different scenarios are in themselves intensely poetic and descriptively colourful and varied, and the composer’s response does each of them rich justice. For example, Quidlivun, the Inuit afterworld, is the “Land of the Moon”, whose realisation draws largely peaceful sounds from the instruments, with occasional quasi-vocal intonations suggesting some kind of resigned lament, against a backdrop of patterned repetition that puts one in mind of a mantra or chant. Conversely, the Mayan Xibalba sounds a more fearful place, suggested by pungent-harmonied chords with slashing szfordandi, creating an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere; while the Norse Niflheim, the northern region of icy mists and fogs, features a spectral hymn-like melody played sotto voce by violins and viola, leaving the cello to explore some hauntingly stratospheric sonorities, with lovely, eerie harmonics. Finally, the North American Choctaw Indian afterworld of Oka Lusa Hacha (Black Water River) describes a trial by water for souls wishing to enter the proverbial Happy Hunting Grounds, the higher violins driving the primitive rhythms on while viola and ‘cello intone with great expressive force the rites of passage, dramatically exchanging roles at one point before the quartet of voices plunges as one into a concerted drive towards the place of destiny, the textures gradually dissolving and disappearing with a brief and disarming flourish.

A “return to life” came with Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions, similarly exploratory, if more “here-and-now” manifestations of humankind’s endlessly varied music-making – something of the alchemic spirit of Franz Liszt’s transcriptions for piano of all kinds of music was evoked by these realisations for string quartet, all from different parts of the world. What struck me from the outset was how the composer contrived to explore timbres from the instruments quite foreign to normal expectations regarding a string quartet’s “sound”, the melody in the first piece Long Gi Yi having, for example, a haunting and exotic vocal quality, around which the other instruments wove a sinuous ambience. The second piece, from Madagascar was called Ramandriana, a dance originally played on an eighteen-stringed bamboo tube zither, the quartet tossing pizzicato and arco phrases back and forth with great brio, across simple and compound rhythms. Finally, the slashing Ratschenita from Bulgaria with its wild 7/8 rhythms underpinned by guitar-like strummings and foot-stampings inspired exhilarating energies and momentums that got everybody’s juices pulsing and tingling in properly life-enhancing ways. A great concert, then, in a most stimulating environment – full marks to all!

CHERUBINI – Double Fugue

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No.7 Op.108

TCHAIKOVSKY – “Andante Cantabile” from String Quartet No.1

SCHUBERT – “Quartettsatz” (String Quartet No.12)

The Elios Quartet: Martin Jaenecke , Konstanze Artmann violins, Victoria Jaenecke, viola, Paul Mitchell, ‘cello

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday, 11th November 2009

The Elios String Quartet was formed by a group of friends in 2007, who brought to this Wellington-based ensemble a wealth of musical experience acquired in different parts of the world. Together, they’ve developed a beautiful sound, and a closely-knit sense of the shape and flow of musical phrases which seemed today to bring out all the lines and contours of the pieces within the different frameworks of the music’s character. They chose a Double Fugue by Cherubini to open their concert, a work which demonstrated their qualities as a group to a pleasing degree – what emerged from their playing was a sense of line and a feeling for the work’s overall shape, so that you got a feeling during the second part of the threads and contourings of the music illuminating the intricacies of what had gone before. The work concluded with a grandly rhetorical statement, again presented with what seemed just the right amount of gravitas, though with enough buoyancy to lift the exercise out of the realms of its origin as a solfeggio vocal exercise.

From Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets, the group chose No.7, written by the composer in 1960, in memory of his first wife, Nina, who died in 1954. It was here introduced by violist Victoria Jaenecke, who talked about the work’s ability to convey great atmosphere and strength of character in a brief space of time (at roughly twelve minutes’ duration it is the composer’s shortest quartet). The three movements are played without a break, the group bringing out all the first movement’s dry, sardonic nonchalance, a mood which darkens into a Lento of almost unrelieved sadness, the music wandering for much of the time in an ambient wilderness. The finale’s explosions of energy were brought off by the quartet with great elan, the viola attacking the fugal argument with fierce determination, the ‘cello moaning frequent complaints in the face of the other instruments’ sometimes unison scrubbings. As the music gradually loses its aggressive edge, a ghostly waltz steers the course of things towards reminiscences of the first two movements, accompanied by pizzicato notes which gradually dissolve, leaving the sounds suspended in a kind of quiet, enigmatic state of resignation.

After this, the well-known Tchaikovsky “Andante Cantabile” (from the composer’s first string quartet) was balm for the senses – the players brought out a lovely “veiled” quality to the music, suggesting a lightening of mood between the folk-songish opening theme and the dance-like middle section, with the unisons of both violins adding extra emotional “squeeze” before the hushed return of the opening – all nicely orchestrated by the players, and with only a slight touch of unsteadiness in the high violin work towards the end threatening to break the spell.

There remained in the concert Schubert’s unfinished single-movement quartet (called No.12, but otherwise known as the “Quartettsatz”) – the composer plunges us into a kind of “sturm und drang” mood at the outset, here made more fraught by a couple of slightly out-of-tune notes from the first violin, but nevertheless capturing a mood of agitation and desperation before the lovely second subject has its say, the transition between the two essayed with great elan, as are the “sighs” which are shared between the instruments a little later. The players were particularly good at attacking the sforzando beginnings of tremolando passages, conveying both the angst of these irruptions of energy and the contrasting moments of lyricism, the composer in his music “smiling through tears”. All in all, it was extremely elegant and articulate playing by a group from which I hope we’ll hear a great deal more.

Peter Barber (viola)

Mary Barber (piano)

Annabel Cheetham (mezzo-soprano)

Music by Schumann, Bridge and Franck

Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church WELLINGTON

30th October 2009

This splendid concert took its name from the title of a song by Robert Schumann, “Stille Liebe”, one of the twelve “Kerner-Lieder” written during the composer’s “year of song” (1839-40). Tonight’s performance of the whole set of these songs by mezzo-soprano Annabel Cheetham and pianist Mary Barber was merely one of the pleasures to be had from a most enjoyable evening’s music-making. More Schumann came from the brother-and-sister duo of Mary Barber and violist Peter Barber, a transcription for viola and piano of Three Fantasiestücke Op.73. The second half of the concert featured firstly a full trio of musicians performing Frank Bridge’s Three songs for mezzo, viola and piano, then concluded with another transcription for viola and piano, that of Cesar Franck’s A Major Violin Sonata. I was familiar with Franck’s own version for ‘cello of this work, but the viola transcription was one that I’d not heard before.

This was one of an enterprising set of concerts organised by the Caprice Arts Trust, a series that deserves the widest possible support for the innovative programming and the calibre of the artists involved. In some ways it was extremely pleasant to experience music-making of such immediacy and vitality in an intimate venue attended by a smallish number of people; but on the other hand it was a pity that more people hadn’t got to hear about the concert, so that something more of an audience “buzz”could have been generated (though we did our best to show our appreciation at the appropriate moments!).

Schumann’s Three Fantasiestücke Op.73 began the concert in fine style – is there another composer whose music so identifies its creator within a bar or two, regardless of the work? It’s such a distinctive sound-world, at one and the same time so focused yet equivocally suggestive, the sounds infused with imaginative possibilities.  This was a lovely performance, the viola bringing a richly varied array of nuance to the discourse, the partnership with the piano opening up the composer’s beloved “other realms”, some sombre and deep, some infused with glowing light. The musicians achieved what gave the impression of a seamless flow of sound while realising all of the music’s subtle detailings. Particularly remarkable was the soft playing from both instruments, the phrases able to “speak” with particular eloquence, employing a marvellous variety of gently-expressed tones. Although not note-perfect, the music-making unerringly captured the composer’s uniquely poetic vision of an inner world.

More Schumann came from mezzo-soprano Annabel Cheetham, with Mary Barber again at the piano. The twelve “Kerner-Lieder” owe their name to the poet, Justinus Kerner, whose verses with their strong leanings towards the individual’s oneness with nature brought a ready response from the composer – the opening “Lust der Sturmnacht” (Pleasures of a stormy night) immediately plunged us all into the “sturm und drang” of romantic sensibility, bringing forth exciting and committed singing and playing. I found Annabel Cheetham’s tones a shade raw in such places throughout the cycle, probably exacerbated by the liveliness of the acoustic in a smallish listening-space. But there was so much to enjoy, especially when the music required poetry and graceful utterance, the singer’s committed response able to make the words “sound” so meaningfully, and impart a real sense of story – the sequence from No.4 “Erstes Grun” (First Green) to No.6 “Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes” (To the drinking glass of a departed friend) in particular featured delightful interplay between singer and pianist, the last-named song a highlight of the cycle, with its ready evocation of true friendship and rueful philosophy, and with the piano most excellently “mirroring” the singer’s heartfelt utterances.

After the interval the trio of musicians gave us Frank Bridge’s Three Songs for mezzo, viola and piano (the composer played the viola in the English String Quartet for a number of years), a performance which again worked better in the quieter moments, the singer able to demonstrate a beautifully focused quality in places such as the second song’s setting of Matthew Arnold’s words “Fold closely, o nature, thine arms round thy child”, and the more ruminative utterances of the final Heine setting “Where is it that our soul doth go?”, all deeply-felt and extremely touching, with viola and piano weaving plenty of magic around the voice to telling effect.

Peter Barber described the final item on the programme, the Cesar Franck Sonata, as “jacket-removing music” – he then proceeded to delight the audience, who had been admiring his colourful bow tie during the evening, by revealing identically-hued trouser braces, a nice touch of flamboyance in keeping with the overt romanticism of the music to follow.  As with the ‘cello version of the sonata, compared with the violin’s silvery voice, the deeper-toned viola brought out many differing perspectives to the music, the most obvious being a smokier, more sombre voice resembling that of a maturer, more worldly-wise lover, whose terms of endearment used rather less outward emotional “juice” but expressed more shades of layered meaning and equivocation. Peter Barber negotiated the instrument’s occasional switching between violin-voiced mode and the deeper hues of the larger instrument with great skill, while pianist Mary Barber let the piano-writing unfold so beautifully throughout the whole of the movement, her rich, arpeggiated chording seeming to transcend the instrument’s mere “upright” status.

The second-movement brought forth a big-boned imposing manner, relying more on depth of tone than surface brilliance to generate momentum, an approach that held back from the usual virtuoso pianistic roar, and created a far more detailed soundscape, enabling more give-and-take of musical substance than is sometimes evident between the players. I thought the recitative-like exchanges in the middle section had a very “charged”, almost theatrical quality in this performance, which contrasted beautifully with subsequent outbursts from both instruments, together and separately. The coda was beautifully prepared for, here, less of an impulsively orgasmic virtuoso cataclysm, and more of a roughly-wrought struggle against great odds from which the players triumphantly emerged at the end. Something of that “charged” quality informed the slow movement’s performance as well, some beautiful high work on the viola matched with eloquent lyricism on the piano, even if in places a touch of stridency in the playing indicated the extremes suggested by the music’s expression. Finally, the last movement underlined the “hand-in-glove” nature of the musical partnership throughout, with strong, forthright statements of the canonic theme from both players adroitly giving way to “running” sotto voce passages, beautifully realised. A brief rhythmic mishap at one stage was of no matter, as the final statement of the theme magically stole in and grew like a magnificent double archway, through which the last excited measures scampered, the players at full stretch and the notes a bit splashy, but the ending leaving us exhilarated and extremely satisfied. Great stuff!

String Quartet in F, Op 77 No 2 (Haydn); John Adams’s String Quartet; Octet in E flat, Op 20 (Mendelssohn)  

Saint Lawrence String Quartet and the New Zealand String Quartet:

Town Hall, Friday evening 16 October 2009  

This final concert in the 2009 season of Chamber Music New Zealand, was a brilliant ending to the year; and General Manager Euan Murdoch announced the 2010 season, CMNZ’s 60th anniversary year which opens with a concert in the International Festival next March from the great Borodin String Quartet.

The first half belonged to the St Lawrence Quartet, from Canada.

The Quartet in F was the last Haydn completed and though it’s not as familiar as several of those in the immediately preceding sets, it is highly original in character, and in this remarkable performance exhibited qualities that even Haydn might have been surprised by. I suspect that the tonal variety, the pungent expressiveness and the compulsive momentum might have been unusual around 1800. But today, such extremely vivid, and rhythmically and dynamically varied interpretations are almost essential for musicians who want to distinguish themselves from the rank and file.

Certainly, Haydn invites such performance through his pains to avoid the expected, the cliché, the routine, so that the composer’s wit and intelligence found ideal interpreters in these players determined to bring the piece to life in a thoroughly arresting way.

John Adams has gained fame chiefly in the opera house and secondarily the concert hall: he has not written much chamber music. His string quartet, written for the St Lawrence, and first performed in New York in January, shows a gift that will surely inspire other similar commissions. One is impressed by the fecundity of his invention, its profusion and variety and his structural skill in manipulating it; and even more overwhelmed by the exuberance and phenomenal brilliance of the performance that will set a benchmark hard to equal.

Adams’s work was evidence of his genius for creating a substantial and compelling work that maintained its momentum through many moods, marvellously captured by these players.

Adams has moved far beyond ‘minimalist’ style of his early years; he belongs to no particular school and this work was simply evidence of Adams’s individuality and his flair for creating a substantial and compelling work that maintained its momentum through its huge vitality and variety that the quartet .

The New Zealand String Quartet joined the Canadians for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet, possibly the most astonishing creation by any composer in his teens. The arrangement of the parts meant that the St Lawrence Quartet, and especially their first violinist, Geoff Nuttall, rather dominated both by the energy and endless tonal variety of his first violin part, and by his total physical involvement; leg-work that even Michael Jackson might have envied.

The other members of the St Lawrence quartet and the New Zealanders displayed comparable mastery if less physically conspicuous.

The fast movements were both spectacular in their ever-changing rhythmic and dynamic expressiveness; it was a revelatory experience, reinforcing the octet’s place as a singular masterpiece. 

(an extended version of the review printed by The Dominion Post on 20 October)

 

 

 

Vieuxtemps: Viola Sonata in B flat, Op 36; Bax: Viola Sonata (1922)

Helen Bevin (viola) and Rafaella Garlick-Grice (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 7 October 

This recital was by two graduates of the New Zealand School of Music: it was at least illuminating if not exactly revelatory, an opportunity to hear to greatly gifted musicians who have been acknowledged in other countries before they have been listened to and appreciated in their own country – a rather common experience.

The pair began playing together, as Duo Giocoso, in 2008 while they were studying at the New Zealand School of Music, won a scholarship that took them to Britain where they played both at the Edinburgh Fringe and in a lunchtime concert at St Martin in the fields in London. 

Vieuxtemps was the great Belgian violin virtuoso of the generation before Eugène Isaÿe, a contemporary of César Franck, known mainly for his violin concertos. It was interesting to hear a chamber work, carrying the opus number before his last Violin Concerto – No 5, though there was nothing in it that would have surprised listeners of a generation earlier. Nevertheless it’s a very attractive piece, whose romantic quality found a champion in Helen Bevin’s beautiful, rich viola tone; she and Rafaella Garlick-Grice played its generous tunes with phrasing that was delightfully musical, resisting any temptation to conceal its frank sentiment or to belittle its unpretentious, popular character.

The second movement, a Barcarolle, enjoyed a plain melody that might have looked backwards, but the performance conferred on it a certain weight, especially in the last movement where the viola spends much time on the C string.

Bax’s Viola Sonata was the result of his friendship with Lionel Tertis who was largely responsible for turning the viola into an important solo instrument. The first movement has a recognisable English character where the duo created interest with their instinct for the Bax’s musical personality. The second movement was played with energy, abrupt chords from the viola, but never an ugly note.

In the last movement I felt a certain Irish sentiment which was treated rhapsodically, with thick piano chords and a charming pensive melody given to the viola.  

Though such a programme might not have been a particular draw for a paying audience, we must count ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy these free lunchtime concerts of very worthwhile if less known music; however, I gather that the voluntary organizers and their overhead costs seem not always to be appreciated, judging by the amount of koha left by audience members. There’s always scope for greater generosity. 

 

Goldberg Variations (Bach, arranged by Cowdery); Piano Quintet in A minor (Elgar)

New Zealand String Quartet and Diedre Irons (piano)

Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt. Monday 5 October 2009 

The New Zealand String Quartet have had William Cowdery’s version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations under their belt for a couple of years though this was my first hearing. 

The nature of Bach’s contrapuntal keyboard writing gives almost equal importance to all four voices as the melodies or themes pass from one to another. 

The first impression of the performance is of clarity of lines; played on the harpsichord or piano the several voices are not nearly so distinct, and I found myself delighting in the individual timbres of the four, almost more striking than in most custom-written string quartets.

In addition to the pleasure of hearing the separate voices was that of hearing the inner voices of the quartet – Douglas Beilman’s second violin and Gillian Ansell’s viola, taking a more important part in the fabric than is normally the case with Haydn or Beethoven quartets.  Many of the variations are for two and three parts while the other instrument(s) stand(s) idly by, and it was a treat to hear Beilman’s warm and fluid playing in many of these. The cello is quite prominent in many traditional quartets but Rolf Gjelsten too must have relished making such prominent statements.

The effect was most marked in the canons and fugues, such as Variation 10 when the theme began in the cello and moved up.

Furthermore, the four instruments could obviously create far more interesting dynamic contrasts than is available on the harpsichord, or even on the piano; and they seemed to highlight the varied rhythms though, as I found later when I refreshed my memory with a harpsichord recording, that rhythm was not as piquant and alert.

It is illuminating to have programme notes that draw attention to the time signatures and the dance rhythms of each variation, though I have seen other sets of notes that are rather more detailed. The work was called by Bach ‘Aria mit verschiedenen Veränderungen’ (Aria with diverse variations) – the Goldberg story is doubtless apocryphal – and it is in fact a compendium of most of the dance forms – German, French, Italian, English – that Bach would have known, and there is always the diversion of working out the exact nature of the rhythm of each variation if the work were to become at all tedious – which of course it doesn’t.  

It opens with an Aria, the statement of the melody very slowly. It seemed slower than it does on piano or harpsichord, but I think that was an illusion as a result of the greater tonal variety presented. The four string players thus seemed to extract more of the melodic beauty from it.

On the other hand, there’s always a price to pay. I later listened to Gustav Leonhardt’s harpsichord recording of the work, expecting to find it dry and colourless by comparison. Not at all: even though shorn of repeats (perhaps because of), I found this more monochrome performance thoroughly engaging, like a musical stroll along a windswept coast. At the hands of such a gifted player, the plucked notes of the harpsichord sharpen the rhythmic character, enliven the pulse and substitute rhythmic vitality for the richer timbres of the strings.  While I’d like to add this string quartet version to my ever-growing desert island, I-Pod collection, I won’t be deleting either of the already loaded piano or a harpsichord versions from it.

Elgar’s Piano Quintet could hardly have offered a more different world.

It’s not a piece that seems characteristic of Elgar for he was not a piano composer; yet from the start, the quintet sounds highly idiomatic, the piano part integrated comfortably with the string quartet.

The players approached the beginning with a rather engaging hesitancy which heightened the emergence of the big, very Elgarian, first movement tune which put its stamp on it. With that and later very conspicuous tunes, it’s a wonder the quintet is not better known.