3 July 2008
The Allegri Quartet
Haydn Bicentenary Celebration
Haydn Quartet op. 71 ~ No 2
Haydn Quartet op. 20 ~ No 5
Haydn Quartet op. 54 ~ No 2
After a torrential downpour in the morning, we did wonder whether we would be arriving for the concert in the rain. But no, the sun shone, the sky cleared, and we had a perfect Festival Evening for this first concert of the 2009 Festival season. This was to be the Allegri's Homage to Haydn in his bicentenary year, so we were assured of golden music to match the weather.
In fact, it was better than that. In the first quartet, composed while Haydn was in London, the Allegri gave an assured, expansive performance, glowing with musical colour. Our first introduction to the new 'cellist, Katherine Jenkinson, this gave us ample opportunity to enjoy the rich blend of tonal colour that this newest edition of the Allegri can produce.
In a further reflection of the day's weather, the stormclouds gathered and thunder rolled just of sight in the second quartet of the evening. This was composed in less happy circumstances, in the early days at Esterhazy, which seems to have been a far from healthy environment, set in the middle of a large swamp and with a "vexatious, penetrating north wind". Again the Allegri matched their colours to the music, with the more erratic mood conveyed by their playing, in a foreshadowing of the Romantic movement that was to come.
In the second half, the sun shone once more, as the quartet played Op 54 No 2, preceded by a fragment of the introduction to the overture to "Tristan and Isolde", so that we knew to listen for the "Tristan Chord". Raffy told us that during a schools performance today they were delighted by the response of a group of four year olds to the start of this Quartet - chuckles of delight greeted the sudden silences at the start. How wonderful to have such a group laughing along with Haydn in his Bicentenary year! The audience tonight was not quite sufficiently uninhibited as to laugh out loud, but one could feel the smiles of the performers echoed around the hall, and the long silence before the applause at the end showed how caught up in the music everyone had become.
The evening was delightfully rounded off with two encores, both of course from Haydn. We heard the Scherzo of Op 20 No 6, and the Adagio of Op 20 No 4.
A glorious start to this year's Festival!
Rachel Wright
Committee Member