SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Other Links

Editorial Board

Google Site Search

Mendelssohn, Beethoven: Eroica String Quartet, Coffee Concert Series, Old Market, Hove, 8.3.2009 (RA)

Mendelssohn, Quartet in A minor opus 13
Beethoven, Quartet in A minor opus 132.

It wasn't just the frequently melancholy sound of the key of A minor. That familiar spell was cast with an extra mist-layer of wistfulness. The effect was from the period instruments under the fingers of the Eroica Quartet. Since their formation in 1993, they have been committed to rediscovering the style and sound of performance during the romantic period and gaining new perspectives on it.

Assisted by Dr Clive Brown, the quartet has been exploring the bowings and fingerings in music editions from the era, among other research.  Their sound was often remote and created an aura around the late Beethoven opus 132 that rendered the music even deeper  - and yet  paradoxically ungrounded -  in its effect.

To hear Mendelssohn’s first quartet, completed in the year of Beethoven’s death (1827) and undoubtedly under its influence, the atmosphere was also apposite. Mendelssohn’s probable subject was romance itself, since he quoted at the head of the score a song including the words: “Is it true that you are waiting for me in the arbour by the vine-clad wall?” Say no more, good Sire, say no more . . .The lighter weight of the Eroica's sound enhanced the switch to the minor key from the major-key introduction — to hear the supreme “major-to-minor” exponent Schubert, played by this Quartet would be an extraordinary as well as an instructive experience — and there was a palpable sense of the music (or perhaps the lovers) breathing in at the end of the first movement.

A Mendelssohn scherzo is rarely less than a magical thrill and sure enough, the trademark Midsummer Night’s Dream feeling was served up after the slow-marching that begin what the composer actually called an intermezzo. And the Eroica’s approach imbued yet another will-o’-the-wisp ending with extra elusiveness.

With a minimum of left-hand vibrato in the string playing most marked in the effects from Peter Hanson’s first violin, the Beethoven came in as absorbingly veiled and muted. The elongated, contemplative church chords of the third-movement, “Holy song of thanksgiving of an invalid to the deity, in the Lydian mode”, intensified the sense of privacy, mystery, and of being of another world — words that go a little way towards describing the realm of Beethoven’s late quartets.

And so with yet another almost full-house audience in place, the triumphant 10^th season of Coffee Concerts at the Old Market was concluded. Chief executive  Stephen Neiman, introducing the morning, reflected: “Who would believe that we are entering our second decade? Especially after the 2000 furore when Brighton & Hove Council spent £4½m on the place— and then said we were of no strategic importance to the borough. All I know is they got it wrong.”

The new series will begin on October 18th and includes visits by the Pavel Haas, the Endellion and the Brodsky Quartets. There will also be two piano recitals, one a Chopin on January 24.

But for those who have come to savour music along with their coffee or sherry and indulgent cake, May 17th at 11am brings another opportunity with a special programme at the Old Market in the Brighton Festival Fringe.  “Haydn In Love” features a narrator (hopefully telling us how, where and with whom), and members of the world class period instrument  Hanover Band playing two of Haydn's  Piano Trios and joining with fortepianist Gary Cooper in two Mozart Piano Concertos. The trios are those in G Hob XXV (Gypsy Rondo) and A Hob XVIII, and the concertos No 12 in A and No 13 in C. With these small forces, it is a fascinating prospect. Welcome to a select upper room in Vienna . . .

Richard Amey

Tickets for the May concert are available by phoning 01273 736222  and £20 (£16), £12 and £10; with £5 for full-time students and under-22s.

^{Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page}