MUSIC REVIEWS
MICHELANGELO STRING QUARTET, THEREwas an electric moment on Wednesday night in Perth at the first concert in the Michelangelo Quartet’s six-concert survey of Beethoven’s complete string quartets. Until a month ago, the opening programmewas scheduled to feature Beethoven’s final quartet (and last work) the F Major Quartet opus 135 as its opener, which everybody I knowin the business thoughtwas odd.
Eventually, about threeweeks ago, the group concurred, and the programme orderwas adjusted to open with the relatively earlyC minor Quartet, the fourth in Beethoven’s first group of string quartets, the opus 18; and everybody felt thiswas sensible: don’t start at the end.
OnWednesday, and I kid you not, two minutes before the eventwas due to start, JamesWaters, director of music at Perth, charged out from backstage with the news that the group, pictured, had decided to revert to PlanAand open with the final quartet. “When did they decide this?” I asked. “About 30 seconds ago”. Ahh... artistic temperament.
Anyway, what followedwas almost unbelievable. The Michelangelos are one of the great string quartets of the era.
Mysteriously, magically, they made sense of having the last quartet first: they underlined the tight, aphoristic nature of its material and played a gentle spotlight on Beethoven’s nonchalant, throwaway wit in the finale; they also captured the playful elements in the Opus 18 Quartet, while their magisterial, unforced steering of the first opus 59 Quartet revealed the full symphonic dimensions of the huge piece.Michelangelo’s playingwas out of thisworld, with structural and dynamic organisation, alongside ensemble coordination, mesmerising in perspicacity and emotional depth. THIS was effectively the start of the Scottish Ensemble’s season, which explains the slick promo video that opened the concert. The group needs nomultimedia extras to tell us they’re in good form; their characteristically stylish and energetic playing spoke for itself. The Conservatoire’s Stevenson Hall isn’t the ideal venue for them, though. Its acoustic made the strings sound a bit distant and deceptively unfocused.
The Ensemble’s powerhouse is its upper half – its violins and violas – and in Mozart’s Divertimento K136 their buoyant drive brought exuberance to the outer movements and breezy elegance to the Andante. Schumann’s A major String Quartet was played in an augmented arrangement by the Ensemble’s leader Jonathan Morton – always an interesting exercise, but in this case not as successful as, say, his ensemble version of Janácek’s Kreutzer Sonata. The balancing act here between individual and ensemble voices was uneasy, and often Schumann’s score simply lost its intimacy and gained too fleshy a texture. Even the second movement’s gutsy fifth variation and the chunky finale missed the rawness that comes from a smaller group giving its all.
After the interval we heard the first in a new series of ‘musical postcards’ from Glaswegian composer Martin Suckling. In Memoriam EMS is a superb miniature – an atmospheric snapshot of wispy nostalgia glinting through shimmering microtones and haunting tonal allusions. Look forward to more postcards from Suckling through the season.
The programme ended in a striking account of Britten’s Illuminations with the excellent young Scottish tenor Thomas Walker. His voice isn’t huge but his agility and emotional involvement were compelling, and fullymatched by the Ensemble.
Video artist Netia Jones provided backdrops of fairground scenes, cities and seascapes artfully shifting around Rimbaud’s heady texts.