Irish TImeswriters review a selection of events from the KBC MUSIC IN GREAT IRISH HOUSES FESTIVAL

KBC MUSIC IN GREAT IRISH HOUSES FESTIVAL:

John O’Conor, Navarra String Quartet

Killruddery House,

Co Wicklow

MICHAEL DERVAN

Haydn – Quartet in D, Op 33 No 6.

Shostakovich – Quartet No 9.

Schumann – Piano Quintet.

The Navarra Quartet was formed seven years ago at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, but it's not an English ensemble. Instead, three of its members are Dutch and just one of them is English. The quartet has won many awards and prizes and its debut CD, of Haydn's Seven Last Words, is due out shortly on the Altara label.

This concert also opened with Haydn, in the form of the sixth and final quartet from the composer's Op 33 set, which was published in 1782. The piece was an enterprising choice. Most quartets restrict their exploration of this set to the two works that have acquired nicknames, the Birdand the Joke.

The Navarra’s performance was fully of the 21st century, that is to say, the players showed themselves to be fully cognisant of recent fashion in period-performance practice. Lean tone and light vibrato were the order of the day, and it was rare indeed for any one instrument to be allowed to dominate. In fact, the balance was one of the strangest aspects of the performance, with equality between the four taken almost to the point where one wished for a clearer distinction between foreground and background.

The stylistic extreme of the Haydn made one wonder how the players might adjust to the altogether different world of 1960s Shostakovich. Not very well, unfortunately, was the answer. This was one of those performances that didn’t seem to get beyond the notes, no matter how forceful the playing became.

John O’Conor was the pianist who joined the group after the interval for Schumann’s Piano Quintet. He provided a solid backbone, and held the performance together with an agreeable balance of poise and urgency. But the Navarra’s playing was still often off the mark, as if the quartet was having an off-night or as if, in spite of its reputation, it may still be at the stage of showing promise rather than delivering truly solid achievement.

Philippe Cassard,

Quatuor Ebène

National Gallery, Dublin

MICHAEL DERVAN

Beethoven – Piano Quartet in E flat, Op 16.

Ravel – Quartet in F.

Dvorak – Piano Quintet in A, Op 81.

The Quatuor Ebène is currently the most talked-about string quartet in France. Its Irish début this week showed exactly why. The players may be young, but they have wise heads on their shoulders and their music-making is astonishingly resourceful. To make a sporting analogy, they’re like a Roger Federer among string quartets, bringing off the most unlikely effects with seemingly effortless grace.

The centrepiece of their programme was the Quartet in F by Ravel, which they played as if it were the most wonderful and precious of musical creations, and as if all other performers of it have missed the implications of some of Ravel’s markings, “Très doux” in the opening movement, “Très lent” in the slow movement, and the double direction of “Vif et agité” in the finale.

Theirs was the kind of performance that can make everything seem new, and if at times the wood was lost for the trees, it seemed but a small sacrifice, given the unusual beauties of the trees that were being shown.

Their countryman, Philippe Cassard, seemed a perfect partner in Beethoven’s early Piano Quartet in E flat (the composer’s own arrangement of his quintet for piano and wind instruments), where the always nicely scaled performance kept in balance the work’s promises of the Beethoven to come and its very large debt to Mozart.

Cassard was sometimes a bit overpowering in the evening’s final work, Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A, Opus 81, and the string players responded in a style that made for some strident climaxes. It was in the quieter moments of reflectiveness and melancholy that the playing came closest to matching this work’s appealing blend of geniality, high spirits and sweet sadness.

The KBC Music in Great Irish Houses Festival ends tomorrow