4 July 2008
The Allegri Quartet with Timothy Orpen
Mozart Clarinet Quintet
Tchaikovsky Quartet No 3 in E flat minor
Timothy Orpen introduced the Mozart Quintet. He had chosen to play a Basset Clarinet, as invented by Anton Stadler, for whom Mozart composed the piece. As the original manuscript scores have been lost (Stadler claimed that they were stolen from him; Constanza Mozart said that he sold them!), there is apparently some scholarly debate about the exact use of those extra few notes in the range!
This performance was a reminder of how chamber music can resemble one of those sparkling evenings among friends, when the food is good and the conversation sparkles. Fragments, accents and melodies were tossed around the group, and occasional broad smiles suggested that the performers were enjoying the music themselves. This sense of enjoyment has always been one of the Allegri Quartet's greatest gifts, and it was good to see that this newest incarnation of the Quartet - and this new collaboration - maintains that tradition.
If the mood of the first half was one of playful conversation, that of the second was of unity in grief. The programme notes (by Christopher Symons - excellent as always) informed us that Tchaikovsky wrote the Quartet in memory of Ferdinand Laub, a friend, and lecturer at the Moscow Conservatoire. Certainly this seemed a tormented and sorrowful piece, and the Quartet made this clear. All the breadth of the Steppes lies in the music and somehow they brought it to mid-Wales... Until the final movement - perhaps a memory of past fun? - which was altogether more cheerful, full of scampering figures, a sort of musical hide-and-seek.
Finally, after some very insistent applause, they gave an encore in the form of a frolicsome movement of the Mendelssohn which they will be playing next Sunday, to send us off feeling more cheerful.
Rachel Wright
Committee Member