String quartet opens up 2018 in very fine style

Perth Chamber Music brought in its 2018 concerts with real style with the Sinopia String Quartet in St John’s Kirk, Perth.

The Sinopia began with Haydn’s famous Emperor Quartet, Op.76 No.3 in C Major. They showed ideal quartet tone in the give and take of Haydn’s writing.

The development had strength and the Hungarian episode was suitably wild. Haydn’s noble tune, the Austrian, later German, national anthem, played in turn by each musician, was the heart of the quartet.

Their minuet had bounce and brought a smile to the lips, while the trio had a more serious tone.

The presto finale gave expression to Haydn’s skill at its apex.

The Schubert Quartet Movement in C minor D703 had emotional intensity. The dramatic start was contrasted repeatedly with passages of lyrical beauty from the quartet’s leader, Gabi Maas, but always beaten down by the other three players.

Frank Bridge’s Three Idylls showed him as a mastery of quartet sonority: the first had passionately expressive playing, the second was entrancingly capricious, the third fast and lighthearted.

Outplaying even these fine performances was Dvorak’s Quartet in F, Op.96, known as the American.

Dvorak’s individual melos leapt from the page right from the start. In the lento, all four musicians combined to a profoundly affecting reading.

The scherzo not only had energy, but feeling as well. The finale crowned the concert: exuberance in the repeated rondo sections and great emotion in the slower episodes.