Quartet gave society show
AWARD-WINNING musicians, Stefano Mengoli (violin) from Italy, Laura Custodio Saba (violin) from Spain, Emily Pond (viola) and Michael Newman (cello) from England formed the Fitzroy String Quartet in 2014.
The concert they gave, the first in this year’s Rochdale Music Society series of Friday night events, held in Heywood Civic Centre, had been arranged at the last minute, due to the previous performer falling ill.
The Fitzroy’s programme was an imaginative one. Three quartets from three different centuries were offered to the discerning and very appreciative audience - 18th century Haydn, 19th century Beethoven and 20th century Bartok.
The concert began with Haydn’s Op 74 No3 in E major. This ranks among the numerous quartets in which the composer reveals his genius as an innovator. In it he pursues a style which allows the players to contribute to the musical conversation as it unfolds.
The other work in the first half of the concert was Bartok’s String Quartet No3. Written in 1927 towards the end of a decade in which the composer’s native Hungary was suffering tremendous distress and European composers were still trying to come to terms with the experiments of Schoenberg, it consists of a single movement in which two contrasting moods, desolation (slow material) and fury (fast, frenzied dance-like material) are presented, reviewed and finally dismissed.
At times the players are called upon to extend the normal range of violin sounds by making use of techniques such as glissando, ‘snap’ pizzicato and playing with the wood of the bow.
Since these are mostly when the music is at its fastest and either loudest or quietest, they require the utmost of concentration and dexterity on the part of the performers.
The members of the Fitzroy Quartet rose magnificently to this challenge.
The second half of the concert was devoted to Beethoven’s so-called ‘Harp’ Quartet, Op 74.
From its hesitant poco adagio beginning and its expansive allegro, which form the first movement, it moves through the strangely troubled calm of the adagio ma non troppo second movement.
It goes on through the intense scherzo rondo third movement to the unexpectedly soft three chords which bring the set of allegretto theme and six variations which make up the fourth movement.
At its close, the players demonstrated their firm grasp of the composer’s musical intentions and their consummate ability to realise them, to the delight of an audience.