Music at Paxton: The Consone Quartet
29/07/23
My visit to the Paxton Summer Festival finished with a superb concert of chamber music by the Consone Quartet, in the beautiful Picture Gallery of Paxton House. This young quartet, formed at the Royal College of Music in London, launched its professional career in 2015 and soon was taking the musical world by storm. Playing on original instruments using gut strings, they won the 2016 Royal Overseas League Ensemble Prize and have been selected as BBC New Generation Artists. This year, they have been named as the Music at Paxton Associate Ensemble, and they have begun a collaboration with Linn Records to record a full Mendelssohn string quartet cycle.
Agate Daraškaite (Violin), Magdalena Loth-Hill (Violin), Elitsa Bogdanova (Viola) and George Ross (Cello) were welcomed onto the platform by a decent audience on Saturday evening, for a concert of quartets by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and right from the beginning, it was clear that we were in for a treat. The sound from the gut strings was immediately apparent as different from what one normally hears in such an ensemble, a mixture of greater sonority and a clearer differentiation of instruments.
Haydn wrote six quartets during his final year at the Palace of Esterházy, south of Vienna, in 1791 at the age of nearly 60, and we heard the last of them at Paxton. The more I listen to Haydn’s music, the more I marvel at his inventiveness, his wit and his mastery of composition. For too long, he has been seen as a sort of missing link between the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, a workman-like figure who could never aspire to the giddy heights of these two colossal giants. His longevity combined with his enormous output of music has tended to diminish his own contribution to musical history. In any other era, he would be seen as a hugely important composer, one of the very finest, and it was his misfortune to be living at the same time as perhaps the two greatest composers of all time!
The Consone Quartet played Opus 64/6 in E Flat with enormous elan and gusto, with a perfect balance between the instruments, and an uncanny understanding of musical texture, presumably forged since their student days. As in vocal ensembles, I always listen to the outer voices to gauge the quality of the sound, and there is a special sound quality in the Consone Quartet which comes from the first violin and the cello. It is clear that George Ross is in complete command of his instrument, and the superb sonority of his playing underpins the whole ensemble. Agata Daraškaite, the Lithuanian-Polish first violin, is a continually mobile and dynamic leader of the quartet, whose expressive playing was a constant delight in the Picture Gallery. Rising to stratospheric heights in the Trio of the third movement, she dominated the sound (in a good way!) in a very similar fashion to David James’s countertenor in the Hilliard Ensemble. For me, it is important to hear particular voices or instruments within a small ensemble, as that imparts a unique sound quality to the group, which allows it to stand out from other ensembles. The Consone Quartet has a unique sound, but a perfect blend of instruments.
The second work on the programme was Mendelssohn’s last quartet, No 6 in F Minor, Opus 80, written in the depths of despair at the recent death, in 1847, of his beloved sister, Fanny. Unaware that he was soon to join her in death the same year, at the age of 38, Mendelssohn poured out his feelings of loss and rage at the untimely demise of his sibling, and this quartet is clear evidence that his compositions would have followed an extraordinary future path had he been spared. The Consone Quartet played the piece as if their lives depended on it, and their performance was a revelation to me. I didn’t know the work at all (I am an opera singer, after all!), and its visceral nature was profoundly moving. Magdalena Loth-Hill, in her interesting and amusing explanation before they played the quartet, drew attention to the different sound quality of the gut strings, and this rendition proved the value of this approach. Turmoil, tension, grief-stricken fury and desperation all mix together in an extraordinary work of genius, briefly allowing us respite in the poignant and lyrical Adagio, before plunging us back into the dramatic conclusion of the Allegro Molto Finale. Absolutely brilliant playing by all four members of the quartet sent us out at the interval breathless but exhilarated!
There was only one work in the second half, Robert Schumann’s Quartet No 3 in A, written in 1842 and dedicated to Mendelssohn. I have to admit that I have a problem with Schumann. Apart from some of his songs, I fail to be moved, or even involved, by his music. Now this is probably more my problem than the composer’s, but, despite effortlessly good playing from the Consone Quartet, during this performance, I found my mind wandering to other things, notably my thoughts on the future of Music at Paxton.
This delightful little festival in the Borders has built up an impressive reputation over the last 17 years, and certainly the three concerts I attended were excellent. However, at 67, I found myself at the lower end of the age range of the audience, and none of the concerts were full. The combination of a lack of large population centres nearby, and the necessity to travel for an hour either way from Edinburgh or Newcastle, means that the catchment area for audiences is limited. The vast majority of accents among my fellow attendees was what we might call RP, and the almost complete absence of anyone younger than forty was noticeable. This is a standard problem for classical music these days, and it is all the more marked outside the main conurbations. The Artistic Director, Angus Smith, with whom I sang on occasion back in the mists of time, has put together a marvellous week of concerts at Paxton, and is to be hugely congratulated. However, the requests for funding at each concert and the lack of young people suggest that something has to give for the successful future of the Festival, and I am afraid I don’t have any answers.
All I can do is suggest to our readers to make sure that they find time in their diaries next year to go along to Paxton for some extremely good music-making in enchanting surroundings and tell any young people that they should go too!
A final word on the splendid Consone Quartet! Their performance on Saturday evening was exemplary, and my problem with Schumann was no fault of theirs, as they gave a superb rendition of Quartet No 3 and prompted a warm and genuine ovation at the end. Their youthful exuberance was truly cathartic and I would encourage anyone to seek out their new CD.
Cover photo: Matthew Johnson
