At yesterday evening's recital at Mannes, the Orion Quartet demonstrated once again that they are one of the finest chamber ensembles currently performing.
The program began with Three Divertimenti by Benjamin Britten. These were early works first composed when Britten was only 20 (and then revised three years later in 1936) and served as an excellent introduction to the program. In many ways, they could be seen as exercises in which the youthful composer worked to bring his own viewpoint to various genres. There was no great depth of feeling in evidence in these pieces, but they give an indication of the talent the composer would bring to his more mature works. Of the three, the most delightful was the last, the Burlesque Presto. Perhaps because Britten was here giving his own take on twentieth century music, it has an immediacy the others lack.
The Mozart Quartet No. 23 in F, K. 590 that followed was one of the composer's "Prussian Quartets" written for Friedrich Wilhelm II, himself an amateur cellist. Last month, I heard the Juillard Quartet perform another in this series, the Quartet in D, K. 575, at the Saidenberg Faculty Recital, and it was interesting to compare the difference in approach between the two sets of performers. In general, I found the Orion's reading to be more literal and less sonorous than that of the Juilliard.
The final piece of the program was Schumann's Quartet No. 1 in A minor, Op. 41, No. 1, a very dramatic and unrestrained piece in which Schumann attempted to work through a number of musical ideas in an extremely forceful manner. This was the centerpiece of the program, and the Orion Quartet gave an impassioned rendition that captured very well the composer's wild enthusiasm in exploring all the possibilities that were open to him, especially in the final Presto section.
No comments:
Post a Comment