BATTLING through the incessant rain with a real possibility an ark might be required for the journey home, another healthy audience enjoyed a chamber music concert of the quality we have come to expect over the years.
The Henschel Quartet, returning visitors to these parts, were a favourite of much-missed former director Richard Phillips whose recent passing was marked by audience and performers alike.
Tributes can occasionally become inflated by emotion, but it’s not too great a claim to say that without Richard Phillips’s expertise and enthusiasm, this area – and it’s loyal audience – would never have had the quality and breadth of music which comes our way year after year. We’ve so much to be thankful for.
Haydn’s G Major Quartet no 76 brought some welcome positivity, passages of soaring melody supported by almost wry pizzicato lifting the spirits on a far-from-warm evening.
Mendelssohn’s dramatic quartet no 6 saw the ensemble close the evening by throwing everything into a fabulous performance full of intensity and precision. So much to enjoy in all four movements and a clear demonstration of a quartet working superbly together united in vision and execution. Perhaps the slow movement shaded the others but this was a wonderfully rounded, balanced performance.
One of the abiding joys of these concerts over the past decades has been the willingness to embrace areas of the repertoire rarely, if ever, heard before.
Sandwiched between a conventional opener and the more obvious crowd-pleaser in the second half, we’ve been introduced to a wonderful cast of the neglected, the overlooked and yet-to-make-a-mark.
The privilege of filling that slot went this time to Freda Swain, a surprisingly prolific twentieth century composer whose E Minor Quartet ‘Norfolk’ has been championed after a century gathering dust, by this very quartet. And what a pleasure it was. Evoking the natural beauty of Eastern parts more through a rhythmic landscape than melody, there was enough here to beg the question why this has been ignored for so long and whether further riches are set to be brought into the light.
To entertain, impress and inspire – these concerts have achieved all that and more and, though the founding force may have left the stage, there’s ability and dedication enough to keep the flag flying.
The Dudok String Quartet are next in the series on March 20. Visit leamingtonmuisc.org for details of that concert and other musical events.
