Dante at Dorking

On Sunday to the Dorking Halls to hear the Dante Quartet, another quartet with Cambridge connections, along with the Endellion. They also share links to Prussia Cove and 'Death and the Maiden'. See references 1 and 2 - the whole business has a long pedigree.

On this occasion in the Martineau Hall rather than the main hall, smaller but otherwise very similar in style and kitted out for the occasion with movable raking seats.

We had the Haydn string quartet Op.33 No. 1, the Kodály Op.10 and the Schubert D.810, aka 'Death and the Maiden'. Haydn good, Kodály new to us and good, Schubert odd. Part of the oddness may have been the acoustics of the hall, also new to us, which seemed to result in a rather coarse & grating sound. Or it may have been that we were sitting too close to the action, although this last, while usually making for a different sound, does not make for an odd one.

The second violin had introduced the Schubert as being gaudy, which I had taken to mean a bit loud, a bit over emotional, perhaps a little vulgar and certainly a bit OTT. Not a descriptor of this quartet that I had heard before, but what with one thing and another, this was certainly how it came across on this occasion. Certainly when compared with the Beethoven Op.59 No.1 of reference 3.

Will I ever recover my enthusiasm for this particular Schubert, of which I have been very fond for many years?

Another short bit of Kodály for an encore. Perhaps someone to investigate. Do I hear Spottify calling? Or will YouTube do the business?

PS: the first violin was born in England of Polish parents, making her way through the Yehudi Menuhin School, at a time when the man himself was still there, to Cambridge. She has also worked with the Radu Lupu whom we heard do the Mozart violin sonatas with Szymon Goldberg maybe forty years ago. So perhaps she is very much of our own generation.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/endellion.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/der-tod-und-das-madchen.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/tuition.html.