Parrenin String Quartet

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 10

Parrenin String Quartet

The fourth concert of the Christchurch Chamber Music Society’s series for the season was given in the Civic Theatre on Monday evening by the Parrenin String Quartet, Messrs Jacques Parrenin, Marcel Charpentier, Denes Marton, and Pierre Penassou. These players are internationally renowned for their authoritative interpretations of music of the present day; and, in addition to Mozart’s Quartet in G major, K. 387, they played works by Milhaud, Eliot Carter, and Berg. Perhaps this programme was a bit out of balance for some listeners, but all must agree that the Parrenin Quartet gave us playing of a rare muQt’prv Right from the beginning of Milhaud's Quartet No. 13, they played with firm and very vigorous tone with lots of vitality and relaxed strength in reserve. Ability to go from fortissimo to pianissimo, with the tone ever retaining character and carrying quality, showed each player’s control of clarity even in a maelstrom of complicated dissonance.

The work began with a short and uncompromisingly incisive movement of stimulating and exuberant character. The slow movement often had the form of a duet accompanied by pizzicato playing and had lyrical appeal. This was followed by a strong and brightly-coloured movement whose rhythms

suggested an exotic and vigorously athletic type of life. It was rousing music played with brilliant elan.

Then followed a Quartet by Eliot Carter, a modern American composer, whose explanatory notes on his method of composition were printed in the programme. They could not be head, of course, for the auditorium was, as usual, in darkness. It appeared that Mr Carter’s plan was to allow each instrument to bring out “its own particular character embodied in a special set of melodic and harmonic intervals and rhythms that result in four different patterns of slow and fast tempi with associated types of expression.” Well, there is nothing much that is new in that—Palestrina did that sort of thing very well. The difference lies in that it mattered not what effect these independent strands gave when they clashed together and each pursued its own development A sub-title could be, “I’m all right Jack.” The main interest in the work lay in following each strand in its own flight of imaginative fancy. However, there were times when, at a first hearing, it seemed that we were in a complicated maze, and one set out on many different levels just for the hell of it Mr Carter obligingly told us in his notes how he had treated each instrument to passages of minor thirds, major ninths and the

rest of it Sometimes the music sounded like the vitriolic mutterings of the submerged tenths; but there were quite clearly apparent many virtues of imaginative strength and inventiveness, with flexible rhythmic variety and contrasts. The mere playing of the notes was an electrifying technical tour de force and the Parrenin Quartet did a great deal more than that. There was never a moment when the players had anything less than complete mastery of every situation. Alban Berg’s Quartet No. 3, although adventurous In spirit and in utterance, had a far more readily discernible and logical pattern than the previous work. Again the playing of the Parrenin Quartet had an immaculate sheen and an effortless confidence. The spirit of both movements alternates between peaks of intensity and troughs of lyrical musings. The programme ended with Mozart’s Quartet In G Major, K. 387. The high artistic integrity of the players and their brilliantly polished technique, obvious even in the strangest moments in the other works, here had a glorious outpouring of urbane grace of expression that never faltered even when some portion of the roof fell on the stage. Even the theatre’s heating system was charmed into keeping quiet during this exquisite playing. ——C.F.B.