United Kingdom Edinburgh Worldwide Pageant 2024 [12]: Kleio Quartet (20.8), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano, 21.8). Queen’s Corridor, Edinburgh, 20 & 21.8.2024. (SRT)
Each these concert events positioned outdated and new alongside each other, however in several methods and with totally different outcomes.
The Kleio Quartet’s programme stretched from Haydn proper as much as the current day, their Haydn sustaining classical poise with full-bodied melodic class. There was an earnest sense of busyness within the first motion’s growth, however with a beautiful feeling of steadiness that held up by means of the gypsy-inspired Menuet and the twinkling cat and mouse finale. In addition they managed to make one thing unusually seeking out of the merely minor key theme that served as the idea for the gradual motion.
Britten’s youthful Divertimenti made a shrewd alternative as a live performance opener, and the quartet hurled themselves into the opening march and the ultimate Burlesque, making these items sound actually substantial. The truth is, Britten’s music performed to their strengths as a result of, all through this live performance, the Kleios Yume Fujise, Katherine Yoon [violins], Jenny Lewisohn [viola] and Eliza Millett [cello]) performed with a superbly clear sound, each line evenly audible, with 4 equal companions balancing each other superbly.
By far essentially the most substantial work, nonetheless, was Wynton Marsalis’s first (and, up to now, solely) string quartet. The title betrays its inspiration. Marsalis wrote the piece fascinated by his youth in New Orleans the place, it’s mentioned, the Octoroon Balls acted as social events for all sections of society to collect and have enjoyable. Consequently, Marsalis’s music is influenced by the musical melting pot of New Orleans, containing traces of all types issues from Dixieland to Rag and far in between.
That places it fairly far past the purview of most classical string quartets, and the Kleio gamers deserve a tip of the hat for taking it of their stride with such confidence. The primary motion, a solo for the primary violin, was like a pacesetter calling time in a barn dance, and numerous different touches had been deeply evocative of the deep south, with woozy swings and slushy harmonies, and a Creole contredanse that sounded cool sufficient to return from uptown Manhattan.
If there’s a criticism then it’s that lots of Marsalis’s materials feels overworked and spun out. As I assumed once I heard his Violin Concerto, lots of the music concepts really feel prolonged past their pure span, spinning notes extended to after they had misplaced their strongest flavour. Perhaps {that a} jazz musician’s vice of not fairly understanding when to cease. Nonetheless, it was fascinating to listen to, and the Kleio Quartet performed it very effectively.
The opposite set of juxtapositions got here from pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and if the time span concerned was much less excessive then it was maybe much more aurally putting. On the centre of his Wednesday morning programme sat the piano music of Schoenberg, interspersed amongst items by Schoenberg’s contemporaries (Webern) and predecessors (Schumann and Brahms).
It’s a usually erudite piece of programming, put collectively by somebody who may be relied on to assume deeply, and plenty of it labored very effectively. He argued a robust case that the emotionally charged harmonies of late Brahms and Schumann are the soil wherein Schoenberg’s improvements grew. Schoenberg’s Op.33 piano items appeared to have richer harmonies and even cleaner melodies when heard after Brahms’s Op.118 intermezzi, and the darkish harmonic experiments of Robert Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe appeared to recommend that Schoenberg’s Op.23 wasn’t fairly so large a leap. There was at all times a little bit of an aural lurch in going from these Romantic masters to Schoenberg’s pinprick precision. The juxtaposition was much less putting however maybe extra pertinent when listening to the pointillist textures of Schoenberg’s Op.19 subsequent to Webern’s Op.27 variations, whose uncooked spareness felt like dental floss for the ears.
It was telling that the smallest leap gave the impression to be from Scriabin to Schoenberg. Scriabin’s Black Mass Sonata, with its harmful clouds of harmonies and its darkish tempest of suggestion, appeared in no way dissimilar in texture to Schoenberg’s three Op.11 items. However no matter whether or not or not you obtain Aimard’s general argument, there was no disputing that he performed every composer’s work with equal power, equal precision and equal ardour. Attention-grabbing programmes like this are precisely what the Edinburgh Worldwide Pageant is right here to convey.
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh Worldwide Pageant runs at venues throughout the town till Sunday twenty fifth August. Click on right here for additional particulars.
20.8.2024 – Kleio Quartet, Queen’s Corridor.
Britten – Three Divertimenti
Haydn – String Quartet in D, Op.20 No.4
Wynton Marsalis – On the Octoroon Balls (String Quartet No.1)
21.08.2024 – Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Queen’s Corridor.
Brahms – Intermezzi, Op.118 Nos. 1, 2 & 4
Schoenberg – Piano Items, Op. 33a & 33b; 5 Piano Items, Op.23; 6 Little Piano Items, Op.19; 3 Piano Items, Op.11
R. Schumann – Gesänge der Frühe
Webern – Variations, Op.27
Scriabin – Sonata No.9
