University Hall Packed For Prague Quartet

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31178, 30 September 1966, Page 14

University Hall Packed For Prague Quartet

The year’s series of lunch hour concerts given to the city by the School of Music of the University of Canterbury ended yesterday; the artists performing were the Prague String Quartet and Mr Frank Gurr, clarinettist. The programme began with the Prague Quartet playing an Adagio and Scherzo from a string quartet by Professor J. A Ritchie. Attractive movements they were. The adagio began in pastoral and nostalgic atmosphere with imitative writing for the strings exploring mainly their lower sonorities. A middle section brought

more intense spirit in higher registers for a while, and then the mood of reflective lassitude returned.

The music was played with sensitive balance and feeling for atmosphere. The scherzo was vigorous and spiky, with soft muttering sounds by way of contrast in the middle. It was happy music well in keeping with its title. With Mr Frank Gurr, the Prague Quartet then played Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major— a deservedly familiar work which took on an added radiance through this live performance and in its setting. All the qualities of balance, presentation of design, niceties of phrasing, singing tone imbued with vitality and richness of timbres aptly chosen were, as always, thrillingly evident in the immaculate and imaginative playing of the Prague Quartet. Mr Gurr also gave a performance in which mastery of the fine points of technique and sensitive feeling for tonal quality and delicatelyshaded nuance, were magnificently at one with those of his fellow artists, and this immaculately stylish rendering of a lovely work will live in the grateful memories of the people who crowded the University Hall to full capacity. —C.F.B.