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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
August 9, 2022
Charles Schultz's Peanuts cartoon strip for February 2nd 1957 opens with Snoopy sitting on Schroeder's piano thinking "Beautiful, just beautiful!", followed by two frames of his dancing ecstatically as Schroeder plays, before finally swooning against him with the exclamation "Papa Haydn!"
Which pretty much sums up my own reaction to the Dover Quartet's splendid account of Haydn's Op.64 No.5, nicknamed "The Lark". (Full disclosure, as they say, the Lark is probably my favourite Haydn quartet and one of my top three string quartets, although to paraphrase Sir Donald Tovey, after Op.20, it's just one masterpiece after another.)
Regular readers (thank you, both of you) will know how particular (others might say "fussy") I am about Haydn quartet performances, but this one struck me as superb in every regard. For starters, the Dovers took Haydn's tempo markings at face value, not confusing the first movement's allegro moderato for "very fast" nor the finale's vivace for "as fast as you can play it, then rather faster" as seems almost to have become de rigeur in this day and age.
That first movement, complete — thank you! — with exposition repeat, was forceful but without ever losing its essential lightness and the precise delicacy of the ending was exquisite.
The slow movement was utterly lovely, concentrated and most definitely (as instructed) cantabile. The minuet was again taken at just the right tempo, all robust elegance.
The exuberant finale was quick but not, as I have indicated, too quick, and beautifully articulated, with an ever present air of playfulness.
Simply delectable.
Had I heard William Grant Still's Lyric Quartette, with no information as to the composer or date of composition, I should have been in a definite quandary.
The music was most definitely American, but there was no hint of Copland's modal harmonies. Was it an obscure work by Dvořák, composed in Spillville at a time when his Melodic Muse was taking the day off? Or perhaps it was early Charles Ives, albeit one of the few with no explicit quotations of revivalist hymns or band music.
But perhaps the biggest surprise was its date of composition: 1960.
None of which undermines the quality of the music, especially when played as persuasively as the Dovers did. The lovely opening movement ("The Sentimental One") summoned forth some absolutely gorgeous tone colours, the music mainly gentle, occasionally more impassioned, but never less than engrossing.
"The Quiet One" has the instruments muted throughout and was delicious, with the distinct air of still waters running deep.
Finally, "The Jovial One", extrovert and energetic, with perhaps just a hint of somebody whose joviality did not quite know where to draw the line.
A marvellous introduction to a composer who previously had only been a name to me.
Undoubtedly, at least on paper, the "main event" was Dvořák's Piano Quintet Op.81, in which the quartet were joined by the VSMF's Artistic Director Arthur Rowe.
Strictly speaking this is Dvořák's second piano quintet, the first having been composed some fifteen years earlier; the composer destroyed the manuscript after its premiere, although he later retrieved a copy from a friend, with the avowed intention of revising it, but eventually he came to the conclusion that his time would be better spent composing a brand new quartet.
And who, now, would argue that he was wrong?
One thing that has always puzzled me about this work is the glorious first theme, given to the cello (and gloriously played by Camden Shaw); the quintet was composed in 1887, five years before Dvořák set foot in the New World, yet this theme has always irresistibly reminded me of the refrain of Robert Lowry's 1864 hymn "Shall We Gather at the River". I suppose it is just conceivable that Dvořák had heard the Swedish revivalist hymn "O, hur saligt att fô vandra" ("O, how blessed it is to walk") set, in 1876, to the same melody, but I suspect it is simply coincidence and, in any case, I have never come across anyone else making the same connection.
But, as they say, I digress. The performance began with beautiful tone colours from Rowe and cellist Shaw, before giving way to the allegro proper. Balances were exemplary, as indeed they were throughout the work; the playing was lively, even frenzied at times. Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt clothed the second subject with more gorgeous tones and the movement culminated in a fiery coda.
The second movement Dumka opens with a quite extraordinarily memorable refrain from the piano, once heard never forgotten. The slower sections were wistful, the quicker lighter yet still infused with nostalgia.
The scherzo is marked as a Furiant, a Bohemian folk dance, although it bears little resemblance to other furiants from Dvořák's pen (perhaps most notably in the Sixth Symphony). The playing was buoyant, with a gently playful trio and seamless accelerando back to the scherzo's repeat.
Rowe's teasing piano introduced a playful and energetic yet tightly controlled finale. Here, as in so much of Dvořák, the music is so joyous, so melodic that one either does not notice, or can easily forgive, the somewhat ramshackle structure.
A tremendously enjoyable close the the Victoria Summer Music Festival and I, for one, felt immensely privileged to have witnessed one of the Dover Quartets last performances with their original personnel.
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