New Town Concerts: Barbican Quartet
Queen’s Hall - 12/02/24
Young Quartet shine with old music and old audience
The New Town Concerts are a delightful series of chamber music concerts which have been a feature of Edinburgh’s winter musical life for many years. I notice in tonight’s programme they are appealing for new board members to join them particularly with experience in social media to grow their audience of new concertgoers. I think they also mean younger concert goers because I’m going to be 80 this year but feel quite youthful in the audience! Still there was a very respectable audience of around 300 people in the Queen’s Hall tonight - not bad for a cold, wet Monday evening in February and they certainly enjoyed this concert by the Barbican Quartet.
The Barbican Quartet derive their name from when they were at the Barbican-based Guildhall School of Music in 2014, so although they are a young quartet the Quartet is actually 10 years old and they play in perfect harmony on superb instruments. They have won lots of competitions and toured all over the world and are clearly becoming international stars of the string quartet movement. They are however young and fresh, when I popped into to see them after the concert to congratulate them on their performance and reassure them that at least one critic was present, I teased them about reading Vikram Seth’s wonderful novel ‘An Equal Music’ which is I think the best novel we have about making music. None of them had heard of it and of course it was written in 1999. I think it should be on the curriculum of all music schools, although I remember the former leader of the Edinburgh Quartet saying he was afraid to read it in case it creates problems! They also hadn’t heard of the Alberni Quartet who were based in my town of Harlow in Essex for 40 years and gave me my love of the string quartet as the most perfect form of chamber music.
The Barbican Quartet are composed of leader Amarins Wierdsma, a young Dutch-American musician who plays a lovely 1764 Guadagnini violin, second violin Munich-trained Canadian Kate Moloney who plays a 1880 Panormo, Christoph Slenczka from Austria plays a Bernd Hiller viola and Bulgarian cellist Yoanna Prodanova a 1788 Gagliano. Based between London and Munich they are still learning, teaching and above all playing beautiful music. They were a delight to listen to.
As for the music it was a varied programme beginning with Haydn’s String Quartet in B Flat major Op No 1. Haydn composed 68 string quartets and as David Lee says in his useful programme notes it was the first of the so-called “Prussian Quartets”, written for Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia who was himself a capable amateur cellist and a champion of Haydn’s music. It is a lovely mature reflection of Haydn’s string quartets; I am listening to it again from the Quatuor Zaide courtesy of Apple Music but it isn’t as exciting as many of the earlier Haydn Quartets and that confirmed my reflection at the concert, pleasant but not exciting.
I have to confess I’m not a fan of Alban Berg whose only string quartet Op 3 was the second work in the first half of the concert before the interval. Berg was a student of Schoenberg the father of “atonal music” or as I am inclined to call it “plinky plonky”: yes I am not a trained musician I’m just a music lover of some 50 plus years and have never taken to atonal music. Indeed I have been known to walk out at the interval of both ‘Wozzeck’ and ‘Lulu’, Berg’s much better known operas. I’m inclined to agree with Schoenberg’s judgement, according to David Lee: “Berg was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement.” Clearly he improved with experience but even listening to it again from the Alban Berg Quartet it doesn’t thrill me.
After the interval we were treated to one of the great string quartet pieces, Beethoven’s Quartet No 15 in A minor Op 132. Written in the last 2 years of his life as David Lee says in his notes “during a period of extreme personal and professional turmoil for Beethoven.” My co-editor Christine Twine and I last year visited the Beethoven Museum in Heiligenstadt and read his Heiligenstadt Testament, which describes the anguish of his diminished hearing and various illnesses, despite which h produced such great music. Unusually composed in five movements, this is one of his finest compositions. I write this listening to the Borodin Quartet’s version and I have to say my memory of the Barbican’s performance in the Queen’s Hall compares very favourably and that’s a great compliment! The Barbican Quartet I predict will become one the stars of the chamber music world; they gave us a very good concert at the Queen’s Hall and got a very warm reception from the audience. They just need to read ‘An Equal Music’ and listen to the Alberni Quartet!
