Quartet in G Op 76 No 1 - Haydn
Quartet No 5 - Bartok
Octet - Mendelssohn
The arrival of a second professional string quartet in this country is a matter of major significance to Irish musical life. And the effect of Berlin's Vogler Quartet on the north-west, where it will be quartet-in-residence to the Sligo area, would be easy both to over and under-estimate. Its three-year term is but a short period in which to start putting to rights some of the major shortcomings of the most disgracefully under-resourced music education system in Europe. And yet the inspirational value of a group like the Voglers, not to mention the sowing of seeds which is bound to take place, could be far-reaching indeed.
The first concert of the Sligo residency was given before a large and enthusiastic audience at St John's Cathedral on Saturday. The Voglers' Haydn, as revealed in the G major Quartet from the late Op 76 set, is leaner of tone and clearer of texture than that of the Vanbrughs; and it gives the impression of being more sympathetically inclined towards the values of the late 18th century.
The Voglers don't go as far as, say, the Hagens, in creating a half-way house between the worlds of modern and period instruments. And they don't fully resist the inclination to crown some of the climaxes with a surge of rhetoric more appropriate to a later period. But the style is mostly persuasive, and often spot on.
In Bartok's Fifth, they were more earnest, more emphatic in manner than Hungarians tend to be in this repertoire, but always lucid and convincing in their urgency. For Mendelssohn's inimitably high-spirited Octet, they were joined - in a wonderful gesture of comradely solidarity - by the Vanbrughs. The Octet is always a great opportunity for string players to let their hair down. Its exuberance is simply irresistible. And so it was on this occasion, the opportunity of sizing up the different styles of the two groups (the Voglers taking the upper parts all round) only serving to add to the enjoyment to be had from the occasion.
