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Christ Church Cathedral
July 11, 2007
"Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career."
Ambiguous punctuation aside (was he suggesting that respectable people do not write music at all?) Alexander Borodin's oft-quoted remark helps explain why his output was so small. For Borodin his work was chemistry (to be precise, the properties of phosphoric acid - what would the cola industry do without him?) and music was merely "fun".
Having said which, there is probably many a professional composer who would have given his right arm to be able to come up with melodies as instantly appealing and memorable as those which infuse Borodin's music.
Borodin's String Quartet No.2 (the first is hardly ever performed) closed Wednesday night's delightful Cathedral SummerFest by the Emily Carr String Quartet.
It was a delicious performance, from the lush string tone of the opening to the vivacious final coda. Although the cathedral's acoustic is hardly ideal for chamber music, the four musicians - in part, at least, by adopting fairly moderate tempos - coped extremely well and only the hyper-critical would complain about the occasional confused texture and strange balance.
Borodin and his compatriots were intuitive, rather than rational composers - as witness the story of Mussorgsky playing Schumann's E flat ("Rhenish") symphony to Borodin, breaking off as the development section opened with the remark "here comes the musical mathematics" - and one could easily criticise the quartet on formal grounds.
However, anyone whose heart does not melt at the sound of the trio to the scherzo, or of the entire notturno third movement has no business being a critic.
The mathematically-inclined might imagine that music written during the 20th century in (at least partial) imitation of the 15th should, on average, sound like something from the mid-17th century.
Which just goes to show how careful one should be with "averages". Arvo Pärt's Fratres may restrict itself to little more than a major triad of notes and may, indeed does summon up images of mediæval monks in solemn procession; but it could have been written in no other century than the 20th.
Fratres should be mesmerising in performance, as it was on Wednesday evening. I know that some listeners who do not normally respond to "modern" music were quite engaged by the work and this must be due to the enormous concentration and precision displayed by the Emily Carrs.
I have, though, saved the best for last, even though it was the evening's opening music.
Regular readers will know that I consider Haydn the acid test of a string quartet. Wednesday's concert opened with the "Sunrise" quartet, No.4 of the famed Op.76 set, in an account which combined poise with energy, elegance with exuberance.
Again steady tempos in the quicker music paid dividends in the cathedral acoustic, enabling the music to be as clearly heard as it is ever likely to be in such a space.
Whether it was the pregnant opening which provides the work's sobriquet; the lovely slow movement with the first violin's decorations emerging from the fabric of the music, rather than being imposed upon it; or the gently playful finale, this was a very fine performance.
There were a couple of minor blemishes - the elfin charm of the minuet was perhaps a little too perky and verged on the coy, and the final coda's speed rather threatened its coherence - but they were very minor.
All in all, this was a most impressive evening - as well as a most enjoyable one.
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