Quartet enjoyable

Press, 14 September 1981, Page 6

Quartet enjoyable

The Melos Quartet, at the Town Hall auditorium, Saturday, September 12. Reviewed by Heath Lees. The Town Hall Auditorium is for large-scale affairs, not for string quartets. There is, after all, 1.8 million cubic feet of space to fill, and the four players of the Melos Quartet must have found it very difficult to begin to create the intimate rapport which is the essence of chamber music. Perhaps this accounted for the rather cool opening, and at the other end of the evening, the occasional overenthusiasm to project the sound in the finale of the Schumann, giving rise to some roughness in tone and intonation. But there was much to savour and enjoy. By the second and third movements of the Mozart quartet, some-

thing of the measure of the piece began to appear. The halting sforzandi, coupled with subtly veiled chromaticisms revealed a much darker centre to a work which elsewhere gives off an air of elegant assurance. The dark center was reflected in the design of the programme itself, with Shostakovetch’s lugubrious Op. 110 in C minor, a kind of war requiem for string quartet. I have never been happy with the idea that Shostakovitch tries to “paint a picture” of gunfire and air-raid sirens. The string quartet as a medium seems too refined for such histrionics. There is violence and wailing in musical terms to be sure, and the players gave a deeply committed account of the middle movements, with a particularly effective third movement where the increasing

edge to the tone transformed the “sad little waltz" into a danse macabre. The promise of the fourth movement turns to ashes in the final largo, and the closing chord with its infinitely sad, open-string chord was spellbinding. Schumann’s unevenly conceived but hugely likeable A major quarted completed the programme, yet somehow the shadow of the Shostakovitch still lingered. By the time of the boisterous finale though, we were all swept up in the lyricism and variety of the piece, w’hich offered a wide range of textures and a rich melodic inspiration. This was an enjoyably unusual ending to a satisfying concert which, in a les? ambitious venue, would no doubt have taken even fuller flight.