United Kingdom Edinburgh International Festival 2022 [4] – Haydn, Coleridge-Taylor, Ravel: Takács Quartet (Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes [violins], Richard O’Neill [viola], András Fejér [cello]). Queen’s Hall, 15.8.2022. (SRT)
Haydn – String Quartet in F major, Op.77 No.2
Coleridge-Taylor – Fantasiestücke, Op.5
Ravel – String Quartet in F major
The small, converted church of the Queen’s Hall is where the Edinburgh International Festival’s chamber music events take place. Surprisingly, however, the central genre of chamber music, the string quartet, features only rarely this year. In fact, there are only two concerts which feature a quartet playing along for the entire event.
So it is a good job that they are both top notch outfits. Next week the Pavel Haas Quartet arrive in town, but this morning it was the outstanding players of the Takács Quartet on the Queen’s Hall stage.
They are a class act, if ever there was one, marrying aristocratic elegance and red-blooded energy to everything they play. Life coursed through every bar of Haydn’s last completed quartet. Extraordinary care was taken over the phrasing of every bar, from the opening grace notes to the energetic closing bars, with a first movement development section that seemed to ask questions rather than pose answers, and a comic restart halfway through the second movement’s Menuet. Calm seriousness moved through the slow movement’s rondo, every instrument getting its chance not so much to shine as to glow gently, and there was a sense of freewheeling fun to the Finale.
They brought equal seriousness to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Fantasiestücke, with a meltingly tender serenade and a focused, rather intense closing dance that you wouldn’t ever imagine hearing in a ballroom. However, the highlight was Ravel’s Quartet, played with a lithe sense of transparency and a wonderful feeling of four independent parts moving in parallel. There was songfulness inherent in each line but complete togetherness all through, culminating in a wistfully beautiful slow movement that sounded like a melancholy, half-remembered dream, and a slightly frantic finale that always seemed on the edge of anxiety.
First violin Edward Dusinberre stopped between movements to mop his brow, as well he might. Otherwise, this musical energy flowed out of the players without the tiniest hint of fuss. Like I said, a class act.
Simon Thompson
The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and is available to listen again on BBC Sounds until 7th September 2022. The Edinburgh International Festival runs until Monday 29th August at a variety of venues across the city. Click here for details.