Stepping into the shoes of the much-mourned Leonard Ingrams, Garsington's new general director Anthony Whitworth-Jones introduced the "fabulous" Endellion Quartet to launch the spring concert season. He also, like his affable predecessor, warned us that tickets for the opera season were going fast. This was the Endellions' third visit, and the somewhat draughty Great Barn was packed to hear them in an elegant performance of quartets, two of them neatly linked, and one less familiar stunner.
Haydn's 1772 Op.20, published as the Sun quartets, dates from his long and not always sunny period at the Esterhazy court; they show his work developing in depth and intensity. Though Haydn treats all the intruments as of equal importance, this does not preclude dominant parts falling almost as solos' to an individual player. Thus in the first movement the cello pursued its rhythmic path against the melody of the upper strings, while in the energetic finale there was no mistaking the leadership of the first violin. Between the two came a beautifully blended short third movement of gentle steadily developing melody which never lost its smooth legato.
Then the stunner' Bartok's sixth quartet, the last he wrote, in 1939. This is an extraordinary work, each movement bearing the same marking mesto melancholy. The programme notes reminded us of the death of the composer's mother during the writing, but it is hard not to make the connection with the political menace of the time and the enforced exile to the US where Bartok could never, in fact, be happy. The disjointed phrases, the use of plucked or strummed strings, notably in the viola part, create a piercing tension, only occasionally relieved by a long-breathed melodic line, as in the last movement which was almost one long lamenting phrase bringing harmony and unity at last.
Haydn returned at the end, as friend and admirer of Mozart, and dedicatee of his 1785 quartets. We heard the Dissonance, K.465 with its famous opening dissonant' chords (not very, after the Bartok). This beautiful work, restrained but searching, with a yearning undertow even when sparkling, was the most expansive and harmonious, quite simply the most masterly, of the evening.
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