EIF: Zehetmair Quartet
Old College Quad
A hot afternoon for Brahms.
After yesterday’s report of a rain-soaked concert at the Old Quad (see Christine Twine’s excellent review), today’s concert faced a new hazard, the sun! By halfway through the concert the strong sun was beating down through the Perspex roof of the big tent and most of the audience were shading their eyes to see as well as hear the excellent string quartet on stage. Seeing was made more difficult by the fact that the stage was dimly lit and the black costumes of the Zehetmair Quartet merged into the black background of the stage .As I left the tent I told festival director Fergus Linehan that I was going to advise people to bring a hat for the sun in my review. He said, “Yes, but tell them to bring a balaclava for the cold and a Mac for the rain!”.
The challenges of a COVID festival are very real for festival organisers and festival goers, Yes Fergus and his staff have worked wonders to bring a high quality programme to Edinburgh and to promise to keep us as safe as possible by using outside venues with socially distanced seating. Indeed Fergus has resisted increasing seat numbers which he could do after the removal of COVID regulations on the 9th August. He rightly reasoned that people have bought their tickets on the basis of social distancing and it would be wrong to change them at a later date. However we have to acknowledge that this is a different festival experience for music lovers compared to the normal pleasures of the Queens Hall in the morning and the Usher Hall or the Festival Theatre in the evening. Indeed even the Festival Theatre with only 400 people in it, as I experienced at Falstaff the other night ( see my review), is not quite the same as an opera house with 2000 people in it. Also the quality and the frequency of social interaction at the festival are sadly curtailed with people socially distanced and wearing masks; no coffee at the interval makes it difficult to have those conversations with music lovers that we have in normal festivals.
But you say, ‘what about the concert?’ Well despite all the problems it was excellent. The Zehetmair Quartet are one of the leading chamber music groups in the world, founded in 1994 by their leader Thomas Zehetmair. They have performed with acclaim all over the world. Today they brought a rare programme to the Festival: the total string quartet output of Brahms, that is the first- and second-string quartets, the only string quartets that Brahms ever published.
The story is that Brahms destroyed around 20 string quartets before feeling confident enough to publish these two. His big fear was measuring up to Beethoven, whose string quartets dominated 19th century music. I think he was right to have feared Beethoven. He said “ You can’t have any idea what it’s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you”. It’s true the quartets don’t match up to the originality and quality of Beethoven’s great works, but they are very competent works and almost orchestral in their composition allowing each player to show off their skills but come to together and sound like a larger chamber orchestra. The unamplified sound was also excellent without the challenge of the rain and only the occasional noise from the traffic nearby. The audience responded with warm applause and were rewarded with a Schubert encore, The concert was being filmed and recorded and will be streamed at a later stage and audio broadcast on Radio 3.So the festival is here and it’s quality is great, but the outside venues do offer a challenge. Be prepared for the weather!
