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St. Mary's Anglican Church
November 21, 2008
"I should be glad if something occurred to me as a main idea that occurs to Dvorák only by the way."
It is easy to sympathise with Brahms: Antonin Dvorák was one of history's greatest and most facile melodists. With such a superb natural gifts it is hardly surprising that the composer himself once wrote (to Sibelius) "I have composed too much" or that Brahms should have told him that "you do write a bit hastily."
If Dvorák had - like Dukas - conducted a thoroughgoing purge of his music before his death, surely one of the works that would have been spared the conflagration would have been his (second) Piano Quintet, Op.81.
It was the Quintet which provided the finale to Friday evening's marvellous concert from the Emily Carr String Quartet and pianist Jamie Parker.
The opening movement's slow introduction features one of the repertoire's most glorious melodies - played with a noble solemnity by Alasdair Money - and one of the most notable aspects of Friday's performance was the contrast between this music and the faster music which follows, and which is interrupted several times by the slower.
The slow music was very slow and the quick very quick, but what could have, in other hands, been jarring tempo contrasts here worked entirely in the service of the music. And even in the wildest moments ensemble was immaculate and balances between the instruments first class.
The dumka slow movement boasts, if anything, even more delectable and memorable melodic material than the first. The quicker sections were distinguished by delicacy and vitality, but it was the slower music, especially that phrase with the exquisite trills, which stuck in the mind.
Dvorák dubbed the third movement a furiant, but it has little of the vehemence that the name suggests; it is more like a quick, skipping waltz and was full of joie de vivre.
I have never quite felt that the composer's inspiration was firing on all cylinders in the finale - nor is the only one of Dvorák's works to engender this feeling - but the playing here was so exuberant as (almost) to dispel any such misgivings. And only the most stony-hearted could fail to be seduced by the beauty of the "reminiscence" section (again so typical of the composer) immediately preceding the final exuberance.
A very fine performance indeed.
On his return from his first visit to London, Joseph Haydn was asked by Count Apponyi to compose six string quartets. For some reason they were published, not as a single opus but as two sets of three.
The quartets of the first set, Op.71, are, according to Melvin Berger, "rarely played" and so we should be even more grateful that the Emily Carr Quartet, who seem gradually to be working their way through Haydn's monumental quartet output, chose to open Friday's concert with the second of the set.
It is unusual to find a quartet so early in their career play Haydn this well. While there was never a lack of momentum or vitality, nor was there ever any sense of strain or tension. Moreover, the quartet's unanimity of approach and tone production was most impressive, as was the way in which they tossed phrases from one to the other - most notably in the opening movement.
I can always tell when a Haydn quartet is really well played: I feel I could quite happily leave the concert at that point totally satisfied. This was such a performance.
Extracting single movements from larger works is not something I generally approve of, particularly when the larger work is a masterpiece, like Schubert's last piano sonata, the B flat, D.960.
It is a measure of Jamie Parker's performance of the second movement of the sonata that, although I should certainly like to hear him play the whole work, it was entirely convincing and fulfilling.
Parker perfectly captured the ineffable poignancy of the outer sections and the contrasting, consoling warmth of the centre.
We seldom think of Puccini as a composer of chamber music and the majority of his slim output in the genre thoroughly justifies this attitude.
Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) is the exception. Written, in a single night according to its composer, in response to the news of the death of the Duke of Savoy in 1890, it is sombre yet beautiful music. (Indeed Puccini thought highly enough of its two main melodic ideas to reuse them in the last act of Manon Lescaut three years later.)
The Emily Carr Quartet gave a delicious performance of this rich yet dark music.
It is gratifying that a significant number of music lovers braved the appallingly inclement weather to attend; they were richly rewarded for their troubles.
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