Oswestry School Recital Series
September 23, 2006
Mozart Quartet K575 in D major
Smetana Quartet No 1, "From My Life"
Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor
The hall of the Peter Humphreys Centre was gratifying crowded for this concert, which was completely sold out. In future I think we will all be careful to book well in advance!
This was an early opportunity to meet the Allegri in its new form with Alda Dizdari replacing Daniel Rowland as first violin. A change of personnel always causes a slight twinge of unease among the longstanding admirers of the Quartet and although some of us had seen Alda during a tryout at Llanfyllin, she was not known to the whole audience. The "rousing Oswestry welcome" with which Christopher Symons invited us to welcome the Quartet was thus inflected with a distinct sense of anticipation.
The Mozart Quartet is a surprisingly genial work given that it was written in a period of worry and illness towards the end of Mozart's life, and the Allegri's rendition was all we have come to expect - full of a sense of fun and enjoyment, the musicians seeming to play for their own enjoyment as much as for ours.
When one sees a subtitle such as "From My Life" appended to a piece of music, there is always a slight fear that it will prove a self-indulgent interpretation of the artist's trials and tribulations. Perhaps in other hands, Smetana's Quartet No1 would indeed have had such a flavour, and I suspect would have proven distinctly indigestible. Not this evening. We were treated to a fiery and invigorating performance; melodies and rhythms thrown from voice to voice and back again, the grave and serious beautifully contrasted with the exuberant and frivolous. In nearly thirty years of concertgoing, I don't think I've ever heard this piece performed better. Not even by the Allegri themselves!
After the interval, the Quartet was joined by Christopher Symons, the Director of the Oswestry School Recital Series, for a performance of Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor. Again the sense of the musicians' enjoyment was transmitted to the audience in a really powerful performance, exhilarating and reflective by turns. This was a rousing end to a concert that I believe we could well name among the Allegri's very best performances of the last fifty years.
Rachel Wright