United Kingdom Mozart, Bartók, Brahms: Kleio Quartet (Yume Fujise, Katherine Yoon [violins], Jenny Lewisohn [viola] and Eliza Millett [cello]), Robert Taub (piano). Levinsky Hall, University of Plymouth 2.3.2024. (PRB)
Mozart – String Quartet No.14 in G major K.387
Bartók – String Quartet No.4
Brahms – Piano Quintet in F minor Op.34
It seems hard to believe that it has only been five years ago, almost to the day, that the Arts Institute at the University of Plymouth established the Musica Viva concert series: the London Mozart Players played in the Minster Church of St Andrew. But not only has the Institute’s Director of Music, American concert-pianist and academic Dr Robert Taub, continued to bring top international talent to the city, and played piano at the majority of recitals. In 2022, he has single-handedly engineered the move from an erstwhile Lecture Hall to a fully functioning venue now known as Levinsky Hall.
What better way, then, to conclude the 2023/2024 season than with a superb programme of chamber music, at which, true to form, Robert Taub joined the Kleio Quartet for an epic rendition of Brahms’s Piano Quintet. The evening started, as is now the expected norm, with a pre-concert talk about the programme and other related topics, hosted by Taub and the quartet’s cellist Eliza Millett.
Mozart’s String Quartet in G K.387 from 1782 is the first in a set of six quartets the composer dedicated to Joseph Haydn. It is the fourteenth of Mozart’s twenty-three quartets. Quartet players and Mozart aficionados no doubt find that the work has much to commend it. It did tick all the boxes for me, made all the right sounds and, most important, showed the stage which Mozart had reached in his ongoing development of the genre. It would not be the quartet to take on my Desert Island sojourn, but the work’s nickname is ‘Spring’, so it seems to have been an apt choice for today.
The Kleio Quartet did a fabulous job, they imbued Mozart’s writing with power and vitality, superbly fashioned dynamics and model articulation. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the second movement. On paper, it is a traditional Classical Menuetto, but the deliciously cheeky way they delivered the composer’s dynamics early on was just right. Mozart requires the instrumentalists to play notes in a measured chromatic scale, alternating piano and forte, to produce a noticeable two-against-three effect.
While this Haydn quartet was dedicated to Mozart’s ever-jovial predecessor of some twenty years earlier, this was, in fact, a real nod in the direction of Beethoven, who was then only twelve-years-old. The Kleio Quartet were bold enough to take the bull by the horns. They teased the somewhat bizarre dynamics to perfection, no doubt fully aware that Mozart definitely had his own fun side too, not always highlighted.
The Kleio Quartet then moved forward in time to the totally different soundworld of 1928. Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet must have been a distinctly challenging work both for players and audience, who would not have been aware, as we are, of the advances in contemporary music over the subsequent hundred years.
The pre-concert talk came in handy. Eliza Millett made reference to some of the effects the audience would be treated to in this five-movement work of some twenty-three minutes. It was, for example, most enlightening to hear that the middle of the slow movement is the first example of ‘Night Music’ in in Bartók’s quartets. This feature of his distinctive and atmospheric style is also heard in the Third Piano Concerto.
Every aspect of the performance was gripping from the very first note. The well-studied reading also went a long way toward elucidating some of the more demanding moments in the writing. It was rewarding to see each player totally committed to the overall performance, not only in terms of a faultless ensemble, but in how each instrument was part of the bigger picture. There was a lot of welcome interaction. Visually, it seemed that the focal point appeared to be second violinist Katherine Yoon, though the violin balance was not affected.
An aside, before I continue. Mozart’s quartet consists of four distinct movements. In his time, it was customary to talk, stamp one’s feet, move about during performances and clap between movements, especially if something was significantly worthy of audible praise. But in the last hundred years or so it has become more a matter of etiquette. The general tendency has been to save up all the applause for the end of the work. Today, some members of the audience tended to clap at every pause longer than a few seconds. That significantly broke up the continuity of the music, and potentially momentarily compromised the players’ powers of concentration. In Mozart’s work, it was only mildly annoying, but in Bartók’s quartet it somewhat spoiled my overall enjoyment, since ends of movements are not clearly defined. Mobile phones are not such a problem: one can, at least, switch them off.
Piano and strings combined admirably in Brahms’s Piano Quintet for this season’s grand finale. The composer had first cast it as a string quintet with two cellos, which bolsters the tenor and bass areas of the texture. He was not quite satisfied, so he arranged it instead for two pianos. No fully happy again, he decided to match the initial power of the string quartet with the sonority and percussiveness of an iron-framed concert grand piano. In this scoring, the piece has remained ever since.
Given the Kleio Quartet’s full-blooded sound when required, it seemed the right decision to open the piano lid completely, rather than use the so-called chamber-music ‘half prop’. That ensured excellent balance between strings and piano. In the opening movement, both forces are very evenly paired, but elsewhere the composer gives full rein to each protagonist separately and in combination. Robert Taub and the Kleio Quartet gave us some absolutely breath-taking climaxes and full, rich sonorities.
Even here, though, the claque (which I had not noticed at previous on-campus events) seemed to try their best to clap whenever they could. It did not help that Taub stretched out his right arm and was clearly asking for no disruptive applause at certain points of repose.
By way of conclusion, it occurred to me that we had been listening to music written by an Austrian, a Hungarian and a German, played by performers of Japanese, South Korean, British/Danish, British and American descent – who clearly got on like a house on fire as they made wonderful music together. If only this could happen just as readily in everyday life today.
Philip R Buttall
Featured Image: Kleio Quartet (Yume Fujise, Katherine Yoon [violins], Jenny Lewisohn [viola] and Eliza Millett [cello]).