String Quartet No 13 in D minor- Mozart
String Quartet No 4- Bartok
String Quartet No 12 in E flat, op 127- Beethoven
The programme note for Mozart's Quartet in D minor qotes an authority on the the "onslaught of neurotic passions" displayed by the teenage composer. Perhaps the first movement could be read that way but the Vanbrugh chose to present it as a good-humoured working out of ideas, and the fugue of the final movement, in spite of its strictness, was almost playful.
The second work in Sunday's afternoon concert in the NCH John Field Room was delivered with great punch. The opening chord was like a blow in the face after Mozart's harmonious finale; Bartok, by all accounts interested in nothing except music, was creating a new language for himself that listeners would have to learn. The Vanbrugh has learnt it and can give the right intonations to the composer's extraordinary development of folk materials. Even the most hardened Mozartian would have to admire Christopher Marwood's playing of the rhapsodic cello part in the slow movement, delicately supported by the other members. The mischievous fourth movement at first seems out of place in the general intensity, but the pleasantly bucolic pizzicato is given another dimension when the strings snap back off the fingerboard. The Vanbrugh conveyed the driven quality of the work with greater projection than usual.
Beethoven's Op 127 was also projected to emphasise the richness of its sound rather that to suggest any mystic quality. The first movement was not a subtle introduction to the profundities of the second, but a majestic, almost worldly exhibition of composing skills, which contrasted strongly with the intimacy of the adagio. The final two movements returned to the mood of the first, though with more dance-like rhythms, so that the whole performance had a sense of homogeneity.