Wonderful music in tune with strange times
LISTENERS enjoyed a varied and beautifully performed string quartet concert at a church in Barrow upon Soar.
It’s been a while since the last classical offering in Barrow, so the prospect of two concerts on the same day (Saturday, October 17 at Holy Trinity Church) was too good to miss.
The performers were the Tedesca Quartet, led by Nic Fallowfield, better known to audiences in Loughborough and indeed Barrow as the conductor of the Charnwood Orchestra, which regularly performs in both places.
The quartet also comprises Clare Bhabra (second violin), Richard Muncey (viola) and Jenny Curtis (cello), and as their website makes clear, all four bring the highest professional pedigrees to the quartet’s music making.
Each concert was well attended, given the necessary social distancing requirements, by audiences only too glad to see and hear live music again and who were more than rewarded, by first-rate performances of works that provided something of an emotional rollercoaster of music.
In two late quartets by Haydn, the Tedescas brought sunshine. From Smetana’s autobiographical first quartet came his horror at the catastrophe of his deafness. Dvorák’s Two Cypresses are love songs, written to a young woman who wasn’t much interested in him, so he married her sister instead, by all accounts happily.
Arvo Pärt’s Fratres provided stillness and contemplation ideally suited to the church setting, before Beethoven’s 11th quartet brought struggle with maybe just a glimmer of hope at the end of it.
So, what were the audiences to take away from these wonderful performances of wonderful works? Sunshine? Horror? Stillness? Love? Struggle? Hope? Maybe all of these. Music for strange times indeed.