SHERWELL CENTRE, PLYMOUTH, Philip R. Buttall, Plymouth Herald, 24 April 2007
A Polish-ed performance by Royal String Quartet
If there was a league table for string quartets, then Plymouth Chamber Music has probably hosted some of the top ones around, this season alone! The Royal String Quartet from Poland had the unenviable task of closing the present series and gave a well-studied account of Mozart’s G major Quartet, K 387, where classical poise and a fine attention to detail distinguished the playing. The quartet went on to produce some ravishing textures and dynamic subtleties in their compatriot, Karol Szymanowski’s Quartet No 2, and where the players’ initial brief explanation with musical examples certainly went some way towards clarifying the composer’s quite individual style. Beethoven’s final quartet, Op 135 in F, was perhaps an effective work with which to close a first-rate recital and the season itself, and here the playing was always crisp and vital, with some particularly rich tone in the slow movement.
The Royal Quartet has just been short-listed for this year’s Royal Philharmonic Society’s Chamber Music Award, where one of the other two chosen has already appeared earlier in the current Plymouth series, with the winning ensemble announced early next month.
UWA PERTH INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, Neville Cohn, West Australian, March 2007
During the interval at Government House Ballroom I overheard an aggrieved listener saying how much she had disliked Szymanowski's Quartet No 1. She complained that it was "awful and boring" and wished there could have been more music by Haydn. She added she wasn't looking forward to more Szymanowski in the second half of the programme. But isn't the inclusion of the Szymanowski works what the Perth International Arts Festival is all about? We can hear the music of Haydn any day or night of the week. Szymanowski, though, figures only very rarely in this neck of the woods. In more than 20 years, I cannot readily recall a single performance of his quartets in Perth. So PIAF is there to cater for more adventurous listeners, those who enjoy being taken along paths less trodden which reveal new - and sometimes astonishing - musical landscapes. One could hardly have wished for more persuasive interpreters of Szymanowski's music than the Royal Quartet, all of whom are graduates of the Warsaw Music Academy and play the music of their compatriot with comparable authority. How splendidly the ensemble presented Szymanowski's Quartet No 2, not least the opening movement in which profoundly expressive moments lay cheek by jowl with abruptly stated interpolations that sounded the sonic equivalent of knife thrusts. Here, as throughout, there was about the playing an immensely satisfying cogency and lucidity. A fascinating compilation also included an early movement for string quartet by Anton Webern which was first published as recently as the 1960s. And the Royal Quartet's account of Haydn's opus 74 no 3 had a taste and refinement that lifted the performance to a rare category of excellence. This was ideal Festival fare.
WIGMORE HALL, Geoffrey Norris, Daily Telegraph
This concert offered an illuminating conspectus of the talented Royal String Quartet, a name not yet perhaps on everyone’s lips but one that is destined to become more familiar. Formed in Poland in 1998, this young ensemble will from next year be the Wigmore Hall’s quartet in residence. Before then it will be gaining more exposure in concert and on radio as a member of the BBC’s New Generation Artists scheme. The versatility and enterprise exemplified by this programme were signs that the Royal amply merits both accolades. It ran a fair gamut of music here, from Mozart to David Horne’s new Double Concerto for string quartet and piano, an unlovely piece maybe but nevertheless showing that the Royal is creditably game and technically adroit. The Royal’s subtlety was certainly explored more fruitfully elsewhere. The concert’s second half began with Faure’s La Bonne Chanson….. Joy, rapture, tenderness and apprehension were lovingly expressed here in muted, glowing colours. The Royal equally evoked the contrasting moods in three of Piazzolla’s Five Tango Sensations.
But the greatest test here was Mozart’s D minor Quartet K 421 in which the Royal’s fusion of taste, poise and sensibility really came into its own. The ambiguous temperament of the music, on occasion veering towards sunnier realms but constantly drawn back to the darker side of minor tonalities, was established with telling discretion, the ensemble’s natural expressive nuances speaking of a sincere emotional response.
BBC CHAMBER PROM, CADOGAN HALL, Nick Breckenfield, Classical Source
Whatever its lithe response to Mozart’s fourth ‘Haydn’ Quartet that opened this recital – with the first movement’s theme nicely characterised – and its spiky explanation of Shostakovich’s most compact quartet, it was the Royal Quartet’s sure touch with the music of their homeland, in Szymanowski’s final, Second Quartet that really caught the ear. Szymanowski’s shimmering soundworld was a world away from Mozart’s sheer classicism and Shostakovich’s introverted and heartfelt memories. We perhaps would most liken it to Bartok or Janacek from around the same time, but whatever the similarities, there are also significant differences, which transported the Cadogan Hall audience onto another plain. Keep an eye out for the Royal String Quartet.
ST GILES CRIPPLEGATE/BBC RADIO 3 Robert Hugill, Classical Source
As part of the BBC’s weekend of music by James MacMillan, the Royal String Quartet gave a concert of music by MacMillan and Sofia Gubaidulina. The programme opened with his first string quartet, Visions of a November Spring……The second movement opens with a waltz, its diaphanous texture beautifully caught by the players…..There was a feeling of drama underlying the work; the players strongly entered into this, the audience witnessing a spirited and complex dialogue. Gubaidulina’s Third String Quartet followed. For the work’s first half the players left their bows behind and used all manner of plucking techniques, mainly on open strings….a celebration of the sheer physicality of the plucking gesture, which contrasted gentleness and violence, at times introducing some surprisingly jazzy rhythms. Then halfway through the movement, the players picked up their bows and the sound world was transformed. Tuireadh, written as a memorial for the dead of the Piper Alpha disaster, explores the many gestures used in Scottish laments. It is written for clarinet and string quartet. The intensity of the unison passages, disturbed by pitch bending, was quite striking. The players gave a nearly faultless performance, made all the more impressive by the way they seem to have absorbed the ideas and gestures from a foreign (to them) folk tradition. All the works in this programme are technically demanding, but this did not cause the musicians a problem and they discovered real expressiveness in the music.
WIGMORE HALL Tim Ashley, The Guardian
Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor was suitably angst-ridden and Webern’s Langsamer Satz beautifully controlled in its restrained lyricism.
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