Endellion

Heard the Endellion String Quartet again on Tuesday, the first time since on or around May 18, 2011. This most recent occasion was, according to my records anyway, the fourth time that we have heard them at the Wigmore Hall, having heard them many times at Dorking, a venue for which they are probably now too expensive.

We must have heard this quartet more often than any other act - a word which does not sound quite right in this context but I cannot think of a better, which encompasses the various shapes and sizes that musical acts come in. Perhaps there is a right word and it will come back to me over breakfast. But perhaps not: yesterday evening the word that went missing was the name of the recently departed Archbishop of Canterbury. This word did not come to me overnight and I was reduced to enquiring at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org this morning. Coming back to the quartet, we have probably heard them between twenty and thirty times - regular groupies - and we have probably not heard any other act more than five times. I would guess that it is a pianist which comes in a poor second.

By way of contrast, while we have probably been to the Wigmore Hall more than to any other venue, its lead it not so great. The QEH was in the running when they still did plenty of chamber music and St. Lukes is still in the running, with a strong performance last year.

By way of preparation, on or around March 10, 2010 the first violin had explained that Hadyn, Bartók and Beethoven were the masters of the quartet genre. He clearly remembered about this when planning this concert and on this occasion we had the 'Frog' from Haydn, quartet No. 2 from Bartók and the 'Harp' from Beethoven. I thought, rightly as it turned out, that the Haydn would not need preparation. But that the Bartók would. So out with the collected quartets, a purchase from what had been the fine collection sold off by Oxfam at Tavistock (in Devon). A collected quartets which came from Qualiton, a Hungarian outfit who did not think to print the labels in English, which were, in consequence, pretty incomprehensible. Luckily, the original collector had written up a translation of the labels of all the records on the sleeve of one of them and I was able to track down the right one, a right one which turned out to contain plenty of traditional crackling. It must have been quite an old record, perhaps from the dawn of the long playing era. And then, having done the Bartók, I did not prepare the Beethoven, thinking that I wuold get away with it with a middle period quartet.

In the event, the Haydn and the Bartók came off really well, making a fine contrasting pair. But perhaps I was tired after the interval and it took a while to adjust to the rather different Beethoven. And listening to it back home yesterday, I find that I must have missed a great deal from what is a great quartet. Hopefully I will get another opportunity to hear it live before too long.