Ravel, Beethoven and Schumann
Crail Church, 26/6/2024
East Neuk Festival Opening Concert, Doric String Quartet, Hisako Kawamura (piano)
Crail Parish Church was the venue of the opening concert of this year’s East Neuk Festival, featuring the Doric String Quartet and Japanese-German pianist Hisako Kawamura. At short notice, London-based Japanese violinist Yume Fujise replaced the quartet’s leader, Alex Redington, who was indisposed. The programme opened with Hisako playing Ravel’s 1905 3-movement Sonatine. This was followed by the quartet performing Beethoven’s Op.18 No.2. Finally, the 5 musicians combined in a performance of Schumann’s Piano Quintet. A veritable basket of goodies.
Ravel’s Sonatine, with its impressionistic harmonic colours, is as unmistakably and individualistically Ravel as other early works like Miroirs and the String Quartet, but there are hints of neo-classicism in the form and the effortless elegance of the line. The Modêrê first movement featured lovely rippling liquid timbre in the playing and flawless expressive phrasing with expert use of rubato and tenuto. The same delicacy informed the interpretation of the menuet, with lovely sonorities, beautifully voiced, subtly wistful and tender. The pacy anxious Animê finale also had moments of French delicacy, before purposeful waves of sound drove to the conclusion. A fitting and very satisfying overture to the Festival, enthusiastically applauded.
Somehow, I had got it into my head that it was No.4, my favourite of the Op.18 set, that I was expecting to hear (the only one in which I myself have played – it has a gem of a second violin part). But to listen to, I love them all equally, and No.2 is one of the sunniest pieces of early Beethoven that there is, the influence of Haydn very evident, even if Beethoven is constantly seeking to outdo the master. The Doric Quartet play with specially-made period-style bows and using period bowholds (and some pretty fine instruments: Yume Fujise plays the ‘ex–Kreutzer’ Strad, Ying Xue plays a 1754 Giovanni Gabrielli violin, Hélène Clément plays a viola by Francesco Giussani from 1843, previously owned by Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten, and John Myerscough performs on a cello made by the Brothers Amati in 1587). The solo and ensemble tone are radiant. Factor in flawless intonation and the sound is absolutely exquisite. There is a physicality in the way they interact while performing, mutually responsive phrasing acknowledged and echoed by whole body movements. As a string player, a chamber music enthusiast, and a believer in the string quartet as the ultimate expression of excellence in both, I have to admit that, in this first encounter with the Doric String Quartet, I am totally smitten.
The first movement of the Beethoven was indeed sunny and gracious, but with plenty of quirky features of Beethovenian mischief, all fully expressed with character and humour, such as a conspiratorial sotto voce passage in the development, an atmospheric and harmonically adventurous episode, a caricatured lumpen return to the main theme heralding the altered recapitulation and a cheeky coda. As is now pleasingly customary, the exposition repeat was honoured. The glowing lyricism of the slow movement was captivating, the agile obsessive scurrying episode in the middle beautifully contrasted, but the solos for cello and first violin and their ornamented cantabile conversation after the return to Tempo 1 were breathtakingly beautiful, with teasing rubato, lovely pauses and a concluding pianissimo to die for. The scherzo was full of mischief, especially in the first violin melody, while cello and second violin exchanged arpeggiated comments in the trio. A cheeky bridge passage with rubato brought us back to the scherzo’s mischief. An irreverent hoot from start to finish. More merriment populated the quasi-Hungarian rondo romp that is the finale, introduced by the cello and featuring such gags as disorienting key changes, out-of-sync imitation, false starts and mocking echoes. All good clean fun. No hint of the troubled profundity that was to permeate the late quartets. Still, what chamber music is all about. Fabulous.
Cellist John Myerscough introduced the Schumann after the interval, praising the Festival and its venues (and in particular the acoustic of Crail Church – no argument from me). He mentioned that we were to hear something additional in the slow movement, a meditative bridge passage in the middle of the first recurrence of the elegiac funeral march theme, present in Schumann’s manuscript but edited out by his wife Clara before publication. She found it superfluous, apparently.
The first movement, Florestan in top form, was purposeful and confident, the phrasing romantic and heroic. The second theme, introduced on cello with answering viola (and always recalling “Who want’s to be a millionaire?” for this reviewer”), was gorgeously phrased. The development was marvellously impassioned, sweeping the listener onward with its zest for life. The slow movement, usually heard as an alternation between a funeral march and a lyrical reverie, with an anxious fast contrapuntal outburst in the middle, does change shape somewhat with the additional passage, and I think I can see why Clara felt it upset the symmetry, but it was great to hear it at least once. The playing remained wonderful. The scherzo, a scurry of scampering scales, is interrupted by two trios, the first an elegant song based on fifths, the second a dashing csárdás, by turns playful and archly chromatic. Finishing in a super coda. It is always a thrill but it was particularly characterful in this performance. The finale sports more Hungarian influences and I always think that it foreshadows Brahms more than any other Schumann music. The dance alternates with more lyrical music (with references oblique and direct to earlier movements) before a confident fugue based on the opening theme of the first movement drives on to a coda based on the opening theme of the finale. Thrilling and thoroughly enjoyable and a great start to this year’s Festival.