Review: Beethoven, Dvorak & Brahms: Endellion String Quartet with guests, Joy and Emma Lisney
The Endellion String Quartet delivered the penultimate concert of their 40th Anniversary Year season at West Road Concert Hall on Wednesday evening.
Beethoven’s Quartet in D Op.18 No. 3, one of the six Opus 18 quartets, was in fact the first to be written and its melodic opening Allegro is reminiscent of Mozart in style and temperament. The Andante with its tender opening is serene for the most part, but contains a passage slightly troubled in mood before arriving at a very quiet conclusion.
The short minuet is followed by a Presto at headlong speed, this time reflecting the influence of Haydn, the master of the genre with more than 80 quartets to his name, full of his characteristic humour and fun, as in the final pianissimo which leaves the audience momentarily bewildered.
Cellist David Waterman introduced Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 8 in E Op. 80, a truly wonderful work, and made a link with the Brahms Sextet which was to come after the interval.
He pointed out that Brahms and Dvorak had formed something of a mutual admiration society. Dvorak admired deeply Brahms’s symphonic ability, while Brahms was enamoured of Dvorak’s capability for writing melody; something which for Brahms extended to his admiration of the music of the Strauss family, too. He expressed a deep admiration for ‘The Blue Danube’, for example, which was unfortunately, he said, not written by him.
David Waterman added that Dvorak’s string quartet is full of musical subtleties and nuances, most of which one imagines went over the heads of most of us in the audience. But the warmly melodic Allegro, the tenderly lilting Andante, the Allegretto with its beautiful cascading violin melody and the passionate, insistent rhythm of the Finale led one to agree with David Waterman that this was a work not sufficiently often performed. The Quartet’s committed delivery of it was full of all the power and conviction it needed.
It has been the policy of the Endellions’ Cambridge residency to ‘rope in’ to at least one of their seasons’ concerts talented young musicians, often studying at Cambridge, and invite them to perform a work with the Quartet.
After the interval they were joined this time by sisters Emma (Guest 2nd violin) and composer and conductor, Joy Lisney (Guest 2nd cello) for a performance of Brahms’s String Sextet No. 2 in G Op. 36.
This is a big work within which Brahms encodes in the musical notation the letters of the name of his one-time finacée now lost to him, a sadness which colours the sextet throughout. The rich and deeply moving melody of the opening Allegro is followed by a passionate Scherzo whose music anticipates in some ways that of Tchaikovsky, while a jaunty folk-dance passage leads on to a vigorous conclusion. A melancholy Adagio is followed by an Allegro, returning the piece to something of the beguiling theme of the first movement.
All six musicians played with a panache that brought out the full extent of Brahms’s musical genius, and it was a delight to witness the mutual pleasure with which Joy and Emma and the resident Endellions transmitted a shared experience of such refined and polished music making.
JOHN GILROY
