Sweet centre keeps emotions in check
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday September 23, 2009
ELIAS STRING QUARTETCity Recital Hall, September 21Reviewed byHarriet CunninghamTHE quartet opened their debut concert in Sydney with Carl Vine's eloquent and acerbic String Quartet No.4. This heartfelt tirade against the inhumanity of humanity is so charged with emotion it is almost exhausting.Vine moulds the music like a sculptor, using sweeping curves and great blocks of sound. This young ensemble dig in to the dense score and insistent motor rhythms with total commitment.It is a good foil to Mendelssohn's String Quartet No.6 in F minor op 80. Mendelssohn's crushing despair at the death of his sister,Fanny, overwhelms his music with uncharacteristic anger. Nothing, however, can stem the flood of invention and this late work, although dark, is still full of energy.Again, the Elias Quartet is impressive, thoroughly across all the technical demands and intent on engaging with the emotion behind Mendelssohn's screaming grief. It is exhausting but exhilarating. Sandwiched between these come works from another emotional world entirely. Purcell's Fantasias are not on the well-trodden path of quartet repertoire but they work well for strings, with their freeform lines and clashing harmonies.The musicians give a wonderfully matter-of-fact performance to this abstract art. Then Haydn's String Quartet inG major opens with a burst of sunshine and a disarmingly simple melody. But as the quartet reveal, this mature work is anything but artless.As the players traverse the fine lines they indulge in rubato which, although it adds a Viennese charm, also knowingly destabilises the four-square classical construct. And in the minuet they somehow manage to shoehorn a tantalising split second of silence before the climax of the phrase, taking it way beyond a good-natured country dance and leading into the masterful finale.The Elias String Quartet, resident at Sheffield and York universities, are clearly going places. Next month they become quartet-in-residence at the hallowed Wigmore Hall in London, where the great gods of chamber music haunt the stage. On the evidence of this debut tour of Australia, the Elias will bring an intelligent and exciting new energy to a great tradition.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald