The older I get the younger performers, and policemen, seem. The good news is that these four brilliantly talented young women will be around for many years to come. They play with such skill and passion and drive. The Mendlesshohn is lusciously rich, operatic in its scale and this they delivered with both gravitas and a lightness of touch when needed. The Ravel was far more ethereal, hauntingly beautiful and despite having fewer hummable tunes than the first, it will stay with me far longer. The audience listened in total silence, hardly a cough or a sniffle to interrupt such superb playing.
Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome, 17 May
Rating: ★★★★★
Andrew Kay
'..first violinist Sara Wolstenholme soared effortlessly in the ethereal third movement Solo.'
'In the haunting Venice-inspired finale, Recitative and Passacaglia, the group gave full rein to Britten's dark rapture, paying tribute to his exploration of new sound worlds even at the end of his life.'
It's a tough old world out there for newly established classical music groups, string quartets in particular. The ones that go on to survive and blossom may well be those that have some unique selling point or something that makes them stand out from the crowd.
When the Finzi Quartet walked on stage for Thursday's concert at Emmanuel URC it seemed to me that the players had already gone a long way towards achieving an image all of their own.
Certainly as soon as they began their performance of Haydn's Quartet in D Opus 20 No 4, it was clear that either the four players shared very similar musical backgrounds or that they've notched up hundreds of hours of hard practice together. Or possibly both. This particular work is full of unusual rhythms, quirky detours into unexpected keys, and eccentricities of all kinds. And only a unified vision plus exemplary preparation could have created a performance that was so convincing and satisfying.
One of the really special features of the Finzi Quartet's playing is that so much of it takes place on the edge of pure silence and stillness. Many of the intricate phrases of the Haydn grew out of nothing and returned to nothing, emphasising the speculative and ethereal qualities of the music. Hand in hand with this goes dynamics. Moving in volume from the almost inaudible to the almost overwhelming is another of the quartet's special qualities.
Haydn Quartet Op 20 no 4, Britten Quartet No 3 Op 94 and Beethoven Quartet Op 59 no 2 ‘Razumovsky’
The Finzis are certainly at home with Haydn and Beethoven, producing beautiful, well-judged performances packed with energy. This blend of creativity and intellect came to the fore in the Britten quartet, a deceptively grandstanding work, which makes demands on both players and listeners.
Watching this young quartet walk a musical tightrope through this work it was inspiring to see them playing with unswerving commitment and conviction, producing a string texture that was mature and hugely seductive.
Cheryl Frances Hoad ‘My Day in Hell’ & Arthur Bliss 2nd Quartet
The early-evening slot featured the excellent Finzi Quartet in two very different pieces. My Day in Hell (2007) found Cheryl Frances Hoad grappling with the implications of Dante's “Divine Comedy” in a diverse yet tautly argued movement structured around the proportions of Hell as its most famous commentator envisioned it. For all that, an element of 'comedy' – at least in the human sense – ensured that the musical response never became overbearing. A striking piece from someone with something to say and the only proviso would be that Hoad might one day find it wanting – not least in the context of Arthur Bliss's Second Quartet (1950) which, if not in itself revelatory, has a depth and seriousness of purpose that bespeaks a composer at his height of his creative powers. Its four movements are nominally conventional in form, but their angle of approach is as distinctive as it is personal, which also holds for a tonal and expressive trajectory hardly to be taken for granted. Heartening to find a piece of such understated maturity being taken up by musicians at the outset of their professional careers, and for whom its considerable technical challenges were confidently surmounted. Clearly the Finzi Quartet is an ensemble from whom we will doubtless be hearing more.
- Richard Whitehouse
