Sad though it was to miss out for reasons beyond their control of a visit from Guy Johnston and Melvyn Tan, as so often in life one lot’s misfortune can lead to another lot’s good fortune. So it proved here in that it gave the opportunity to a quartet relatively new on the block to fly into Leicester and make their mark.
And it was some mark! The Bloomsbury Quartet has clearly a wish to shake up both repertoire and the way that repertoire is presented to an audience. In this case they asked for the concert to be given on the floor of the gallery rather than on the stage with the audience on all four sides of them. In addition they presented a programme which had a coherence in that it presented four works the composers of which had close connections, two quartets of Dame Elizabeth Maconchy, her 1st premiered in 1933 and her 11th in 1977, her daughter Nicola Le Fanu’s 2nd premiered in 1996 and Vaughan Williams’ 2nd which had its first hearing during WW2 in 1944. The link between the family and the latter was that VW was for a time Dame Elizabeth’s teacher.
Before the concert I was sceptical of the need in the intimate atmosphere of the Museum Gallery to alter the seating arrangements so drastically. However, in the event it worked very well. Indeed, the corporate ensemble sound was if anything enhanced where I was sitting. The richness and the drama of the playing was often truly memorable . The only slight question mark was that spatially it was difficult for the ear at times to differentiate between the instrumental strands. However, having in one’s sight lines the faces of other people listening to the music certainly did increase the sense of a shared experience between audience and players so crucial to being at a live performance. Finally, despite the fact that I was listening in the main to music that was new to me, overall what could be said with little doubt was that this was a quartet which was well on the way to being of the front rank, such was the finesse and fervour of the playing.
And what of the programme? Well, I can say that it was for the most part stimulating and in places revelatory. It was perhaps rather too long for the format of a Lunchtime concert without interval, though who is to criticise the enthusiasm of the ensemble who wished to give more rather than less for the sake of completeness. However, for this listener at least there was a price to pay. The transition from the Vaughan Williams to the Le Fanu was too sudden a lurch and for me worked seriously against the latter.
But more about the possible reasons for that later. Firstly, I found Elizabeth Maconchy’s music, which bookended the concert, compelling. During her long life she was by no means ignored and she clearly got over the initial barrier erected against all female composers of her time. Her gong is sufficient proof of that but this was my first live experience of her music in 60 years of concert going, and that nearly didn’t happen. Perhaps one of reasons was that her music to judge from this sample does not appear to have jumped on the bandwagon of the Avant Garde. The programme mentioned that she was not drawn to her teacher’s sources of strength either but in fact VW ‘s rejection of Germanic influences was not a whole sight different to what Bartok and Janacek, her supposed sources, were doing. Actually her tonal world in her first Quartet reminded me of Shostakovich, which is intriguing in that in 1933 he had still to begin writing in the form. This was music of tremendous energy , coupled with a lyrical gift which does not always feature much in some 20c composers. The Bartok overtones of the scherzo were with complete naturalness superceded in the slow movement by music of some beauty, only for the last movement to display a winning wit and a constant capacity to surprise. As a whole, one had an impression of a composer of real mettle.
This was an impression which at the end of the concert ,even when this listener’s attention had been flagging, was re-inforced by her 11th Quartet written over 40 years later. There seemed simply no falling away from the freshness and accomplishment of the earlier work. The sureness of touch in which the material was succinctly welded into a musical development that held the attention made for a very satisfying conclusion to the concert.
This was just as well because before this final item the Nicola Le Fanu Quartet had rather tried my patience, not least because of the rather portentous statement of the composer likening her work to a sonnet and its form. Now, the sonnet is the most extreme example in Western literature of the demands of a predetermined succinct form being the primary challenge to the poet when it comes to the shaping of the material, yet ironically of all the works on show in this concert this quartet seemed to me disparate to the point of being fragmentary, with material that sadly failed to suggest much that was individual. Of course, this was a first hearing and the fault may very much lie with me.
I suspect also that its place in the concert may be counted a musical misfortune for this work, following as it did a great performance of a great work. I had never encountered Vaughan Williams 2nd Quartet in the flesh before but two years ago, having heard his first Quartet performed by the Maggini, I was so moved that I bought their record of all three of the composer’s quartets. Furthermore I played the 2nd the night before this concert and was much impressed.
However, nothing prepared me for its effect live. Here was a huge range of feeling from the frequently agitated music of great force and variety in the first and 3rd movements, contrasting in the 2nd and then the final epilogue with music that had a unique visionary power, played with a sonorous power and richness which I found overwhelming. To judge by its reception I was certainly not alone in my response. I have never doubted VW’s greatness as a composer even when his music in the decades after his death almost disappeared from concert schedules, if not from recordings. I have always thought Elizabeth Lutyens’ dismissal of his music as ‘cow pat’ one of the most ignoble of jibes in the long history of composers saying horrid things about their rivals. I now find him to have the uniqueness of the very great perhaps because, amongst much else that characterises his output, he taps like no other into a particular English vision, in this case exemplified by Blake, Bunyan and the Metaphysical poets, a way of looking at the world that can see the transcendent in the apparently mundane. Also, I find myself responding to the way he lived his life. For instance, he declined to describe his works(!) and let his music do the communicating, sometimes even to his own detriment. Only recently his 3rd symphony has been recognised not as an English pastoral but what one critic described as the most moving musical memorial to all to those who died in the carnage of Flanders and France.
So, for me and I suspect many in the audience the Bloomsbury Quartet could hardly have made a greater impact on their Leicester Debut. They charmingly thanked the audience for their warmth and enthusiasm and I think many will hope to hear them again before long.
The Diary of a Leicester Concert-goer 