Beethoven meets Africa was the central motif of the Brodsky Quartet’s recital on Saturday. Back in 2000, the ensemble commissioned six composers to write responses to the Beethoven Op.18 quartets. They included Tunde Jegede, a young British composer of Nigerian descent. Jegede trained in both classical European music and in the musical tradition of West Africa. His Beethoven-inspired Quartet No.2 is engaging. It responds to the experience of hearing the original, in much the way a jazz musician might respond in performance to the material of a fellow performer. Its language owes something to minimalism, repeating phrases creating an insistent, pulsing energy in the first half, with a more lyrical second section following. The improvisation and repetition in Jegede’s piece also owes something to the influence of West Africa. To open the concert guest musician Jali Fily Cissokho played several pieces on the kora, the traditional harp-lute of West African music. The performer creates an underlying rhythmic pulse overlaid with elaborate improvisations, and this technique has clearly influenced Jegede’s writing. Between Cissokho’s opening recital and Jegede’s Quartet No.2 we should have heard the Beethoven Op.18/2 but the quartet had been unable to rehearse this as viola player Paul Cassidy had a wounded finger, so they played Op.18/3 instead. This rather undermined the logic of the original programme, but their playing was so spirited and warm it hardly mattered. A second piece by Jegede, Exile and Return, followed his Quartet No.2. In this the Brodskys were joined by Jegede playing kora, and Maya Jobarteh on acoustic guitar. The piece was written to commemorate the bicentenary in 2007 of the abolition of slavery. It’s a moving work, a kind of ‘in memoriam’ full of sorrow and quiet reflection. The evening ended with Bartok’s Quartet No.1, a rich work of taught structure and at times demonic energy. The ensemble’s performance was full of characteristic insight, impassioned and committed.
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