Music assessment: ASQ’s Symonds Beethoven

The position of those two lengthy and tough works aspect by aspect, with no sweetener in between (aside from what you can seize on the drinks bar at interval), was daunting, to say the least. However numerous issues occurred on this live performance that lifted it far above the unusual and left one feeling renewed admiration for this group and the music they carry out.

In its new configuration with violist Christopher Cartlidge and cellist Michael Dahlenburg, they appear to have discovered a extra intense focus. Cartlidge joined the ASQ in July final 12 months, whereas Dahlenburg has been with the group since late 2020, and to take nothing away from its earlier incarnations, the quartet is extraordinarily evenly matched now, in tone manufacturing and musical considering.

Simply listening to them play is a pleasure, because the mixing of devices is so tremendous that for the primary time the group resembles one single “sound machine”. In virtuosic music – as in Symonds’ String Quartet No.2, and as Beethoven’s Fourteenth String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op.131, may pretty be described – the result’s one thing at which to marvel. This live performance was excessive precision from the primary word to the final, and fairly extraordinary to witness.

In order that was one factor. However the different was the conjunction of those two works, during which – oddly sufficient, although clearly meant within the design of this live performance – they honestly did complement one another. One was mint new and the opposite is among the many most hallowed, canonical creations in chamber music, 196 years older and belonging to an unutterably completely different world.

But in of their looking high quality and wrestling with concepts, all throughout the area of “pure artwork”, the Symonds and Beethoven share an identical intent. By no means thoughts their completely different chronologies: each appeared like freshly “modern” works.

Symonds – a Sydney composer whose Blühen chamber music was carried out at UKARIA within the 2021 Adelaide Pageant – constructs his Second String Quartet in an attention-grabbing manner. Its two actions comprise intentional instabilities that put the piece out of stability, inflicting it to maneuver in unpredictable instructions. The primary motion relies round a quick, ascending scale that comes whisper quiet firstly as a form of spectral fluttering within the first violin. Heard in opposition to a soulful cello line and step by step shared throughout the ensemble, this scale disintegrates right into a gossamer texture virtually like aural spiderwebs.

Because the velocity gathers, the devices interact in fabulous reducing and slicing actions, however in the meantime that preliminary scale retains reappearing and creating incongruities. The second motion presents six unrelated concepts which are mixed in additional sudden methods. This dialectical content material propels the work with a particular vitality, and Symonds’ writing is transparently clear even at its most complicated. He understands the string quartet medium so very properly.

After this invigorating and good composition, and listening to it obtain the very best stage of virtuosity, it was again to the acquainted – besides that Beethoven’s late string quartets are actually something however that. Op.131’s seven actions don’t have any precedent, even inside Beethoven’s personal oeuvre, and the expressive extremes of its language, veering from the serene to the perverse and the downright comical, can nonetheless be baffling at this time.

Seemingly, Op.131 was Beethoven’s favorite quartet, and Schubert apparently mentioned on listening to it: “After this, what’s left for us to jot down?”

Nonetheless, the query for now was what the ASQ would select to do with it interpretationally. The reply got here quickly sufficient. Its opening fugue, harking back to Bach’s Artwork of Fugue, possessed a glassy stillness that appeared to be free from the constraints of metrical time, and the group’s precision with tuning gave it uncommon cleanliness of texture. There was nothing right here remotely like Haydn, Mozart and even middle-period Beethoven: it was shorn of sentiment and totally trendy sounding.

Every subsequent motion was philosophically introspective with out being weighed down by any imposed profundity. Gliding segues made the entire 40-minute construction really feel effortlessly refined and, because it had been, one seamless composition.

Significantly great was the unaffected melodic simplicity of the musicians’ enjoying and the rigorously crafted exchanges between pairs of voices within the fourth motion Andante. However most distinctive was the best way the ASQ took the scherzo-like fifth motion: lightning fast, it rose and receded in waves slightly than being tied down by traditional rhythmic strictures. Completely cheeky, it made sense as a result of Beethoven was so clearly having enjoyable by the tip of this motion with assorted pizzicato, sul ponticello and different results.

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This cleanly rendered image of Beethoven is a radical departure from the best way this music is historically heard. As a lot as one nonetheless could love the best way Takács Quartet and different established teams play it, this new window on Op.131 was marvellously refreshing – and technically much more achieved.

Because the group members alluded to greater than as soon as of their spoken introductions whereas on stage, they put months of assiduous work into each items. The outcomes definitely confirmed: this was artistry of the very highest calibre.

The Australian String Quartet carried out Symonds Beethoven on the Adelaide City Corridor on Tuesday night time and can take it on tour to Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT. The quartet can be performing a live performance that includes works by Adès and Beethoven at UKARIA Cultural Centre this Friday morning (October 21).