United Kingdom Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2023 [2] – Holloway, Beethoven: Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and Orsino Winds. Marble Hall, Hatfield House, 30.9.2023. (CS)
Robin Holloway – Quintet for bassoon and string quartet, Op.120 (world premiere)
Beethoven – Septet in E-flat, Op.20
This early evening concert in the Marble Hall of Hatfield House brought together Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and Orsino Winds, for a programme which introduced a new work for bassoon and string quartet and revisited an old favourite, Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat Op.20.
Robin Holloway’s quintet for bassoon and strings was composed in 2021 and is the fifth in a series of such quintets – following works for horn, clarinet, oboe and flute – which were composed during the pandemic. Lasting about 12 minutes, the quintet consists of five movements which are played without a break. Bassoonist Amy Harman was joined by violinists Elena Urioste – co-director, with pianist Tom Poster, of Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective – and Braimah Kanneh-Mason, viola player Edgar Francis and cellist Tony Rymer.
In the first movement, Commod/genial, though the strings uttered the opening statement it was the bassoon which led the way, Harman’s lyrical roving inviting the two violins to join her on her meandering. Holloway employs a variety of string textures, while the episodes for full ensemble have a satisfying neo-Romantic richness. Similarly, in the following Serioso the lone bassoon line was gradually deepened and warmed by the string entries, the lower voices, in particular, echoing and enriching the bassoon’s extended melodising.
The Scherzo was playful and bustling, the strings’ ceaseless exchanges firing up an energy which became almost combative towards the close. The mood calmed in the fourth movement, as the bassoon was accompanied by each solo string-player in turn, leading to an intense, sustained episode for the full ensemble. But, Holloway didn’t let sombreness dominate for long. The Finale was enlivened with folky step, though at times one sensed the acerbity of Shostakovich, too, and the movement dissipated into the bassoon’s final falling fifth – conclusive, but bearing a hint of melancholy.
Holloway was fortunate to have musicians of this calibre to present this first performance of his quintet. Harman’s playing was authoritative and wonderfully engaging throughout, and the ‘collective’ of the ensemble’s name was proved apposite. The underlying tonal centre of the music was comforting, but Holloway pulls the harmonies in sometimes unsettling directions, sustaining interest and piquing one’s curiosity, while always remaining convincing and coherent. The Bassoon Quintet is an economical and persuasive work, which I look forward to hearing again.
Beethoven’s early six-movement Septet for violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, and horn – a sort of divertimento-cum-Viennese Harmoniemusik – went down well with the audience at the Hofburg Theatre when it was first performed on 2nd April 1800. A bit too well for Beethoven’s liking. To his chagrin, it was preferred to his later, weightier contributions – the very works to which the Septet’s quasi-symphonic scale cast a nod, and in so doing revealed Beethoven’s expansionist vision of classical forms. In the Marble Hall, Harman, Urioste, Francis and Rymer were joined by double bassist Ruohua Li, horn player Alec Frank-Gemmill and clarinettist Matthew Hunt, for a performance which combined Viennese plushness with rhythmic leanness, in a feast of colour and exuberance.
The Adagio introduction displayed the balance of majesty and detail, of ensemble richness and lucid shadings, that would characterise the whole performance. Once the Allegro got underway, with heaps of ‘brio’, Urioste and Hunt’s melodic exchanges swept along, buoyed up by the busy bubbling of the figurations and Frank-Gemmill’s rock-steady horn. There was a real sense of ‘theatre’ – in Urioste’s incisive rhetoric, for example, and the ‘romantic’ duetting of clarinet and bassoon at the close of the exposition – but the players avoided indulging the music’s more melodramatic qualities – the coda makes precocious claims for grandeur! – and delineated the formal structure with clarity.
Hunt’s clarinet theme was varied of colour in the Adagio cantabile, the gentle string ‘nudges’, almost vibrato-less, providing space for Urioste’s elaborate countermelody to sing. The 9/8 time-signature helped conjure a sense of spaciousness, which was sustained when Harman took the melodic lead, but this was always in tandem with forward movement. The short Menuetto had a lovely grace, horn and clarinet bantering warmly in the trio, Frank-Gemmill breezing through his tricky triplets.
Violin and viola initiated a relaxed rural stroll at the start of the Theme and Variations, the strings’ imitative entries creating a lovely intimacy in the opening variations. Tension was skilfully built through the transition to the minor mode, characterised by taut, focused string unisons, and during the woodwind’s fragmentation and diminishing of the material in the coda. Hunt’s breezy downward arpeggio propelled the light, Mendelssohnian scampering of the Scherzo, Ryder’s agile, expressive cello solo providing for contrast in the Trio. After a grave introduction, in a funereal minor key, Urioste lit the fuse of the Finale, and led the romp to the close, sparks flying from the top of the fingerboard, the violin’s cadenza absolutely masterful.
The performance balanced exciting ensemble cohesion with superlative solo playing by all the musicians, the six movements offering high spirits and joy.
Claire Seymour