In which there are Mozart, the saddest of all keys, and Lady Anna the Trollope
- Writing about music is like dancing about architecture as I intend to demonstrate by recording my reactions to a recent gig by the Chiaroscuro Quartet, with a depping viola player but all using period strings and bows. They played three string quartets, by Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert, and imo the Mozart benefitted most from the period strings, with little difference to the quality and enjoyability of the Haydn, and Schubert off-stage rolling in his grave because they'd taken away the shiny new tech which enhances his Romanticism.
First up was Mozart's string quartet No.14 in G major, which Mozart dedicated to Haydn, and is often nicknamed "Spring" for reasons that escape me but is as good an ekename as any, I suppose. The added texture and punctuation from the gut strings and short bows brought out the arrangement of this quartet as a team of four soloists playing tag, rather than the more usual mini-orchestra preferred by Haydn. I'd nickname this Mozart's "watch me juggle one audience and four soloists in G major". It demonstrates to me how well Mozart understood human nature in both performers and audience. Performers who're treated as soloists are more likely to give a piece everything they can. Audiences tend not to pay attention at the beginning of any piece/concert and often need to be prompted to applause at the end, so Mozart structured each movement as intro → what he wanted to say → the attention seeking outro. There are performances of this online but none reminiscent of the Chiaroscuro Quartet performance I heard, however this appears to be a legal upload from the Cleveland Quartet, 30mins utu (ETA: although I prefer this recording by Quatuor Mosaiques, 34mins utu).
Next was Haydn's string quartet Opus 76, No.2 in THE SADDEST OF ALL KEYS [/Spinal Tap] but with massive cheating, nicknamed Fifths because of the falling fifths at the beginning, while the third movement is inexplicably ekenamed the Witches Minuet (so think witches doing 18th century courtly dancing... or not). Haydn = crowd-pleasers which are basically indestructible by performers of even an average standard. It's good but suffered for me by being placed after the Mozart, because of my personal preferences. This is the first movement, 10mins utu, and should have side-bar links to 2/4 and 3-4/4, and it's being played by Quatuor Mosaiques on period instruments but the sound quality seems to have suffered noticeably in places from file compression (so if you like it then buy the original, obv).
Last and definitively most final was Schubert's string quartet No.14 in THE SADDEST OF ALL KEYS, nicknamed Death and the Maiden, which Schubert wrote while dying young from an incurable bout of Romanticism [/first he composed then he decomposed]. My favourite thing about this Top String Quartet Fave is that it presumably prevented Schubert writing more bloody lieder. I spent much of the performance contemplating the audience's pleasingly varied fashion choices, and trying not to cough (boredom coughing - the curse of classical music lovers everywhere). There'll be a gazillion versions of this proliferating on utu like aural anaesthetics and, frankly, even thinking about them is killing my brain cells so you'll have to take a punt on finding it yourselves. [/unpopular opinion #36428718]
During the Haydn I'd been thinking it was a string-snapper, and of the cost of gut strings and wondering if that counted as a composer's callous disregard for performers and their concerns, but nothing untoward happened... until halfway through Schubert's Death and the Violin, when the quartet had to retire backstage while one of the fiddle players restrung and retuned. /heh
- Lady Anna: All at Sea, is a play based on the novel Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope but placed within a framing story of Trollope's sea voyage to Australia. The play was written by Craig Baxter as a commission for the Trollope Society in 2015 so the author didn't have a wholly free choice of material but he's stitched together a coherent story that fits into a couple of hours and any emotional whiplash in the second half is mostly Trollope's fault. It's not a Great Play and doesn't, imo, have much to say about the human condition but it's good enough that it'll probably be regularly revived by Trollope fandom. The cast of seven share fifteen recurring roles between them with surprising ease, and in this touring production all the players were more than competent (although two of the three young persons did need to project better at the very beginning but to be fair I saw this in an unusually large auditorium for the provinces and younger actors often take a while to adjust to the space). The staging was glorious. There was excellent use of on stage space and entrances/exits. The costumes were simple but appropriate to suggest the time period, with only the exchange of one or two simple props to indicate when one actor swapped between two roles and that was enough. The set was splendid (? by Libby Watson ?). The backdrop and wings were dressed with oversized fading and yellowed manuscript so the action was clearly taking place within the pages of a book and the mind of an author. There were faded pastel covered oversized books suspended from above and piles of books of varying heights scattered about the stage, which became doorsteps or chairs and tables or stepping stones across a river. There were very few other props and the actors smoothly produced, rearranged, and removed everything themselves with the assistance of very short musical interludes between scenes. The music was interesting and not intrusive but didn't stand out to me. Overall I enjoyed Lady Anna: All at Sea and the audience applause at the end indicated general pleasure, although I feel compelled to add that many of us had probably only paid £15 for front stalls seats. (4/5 but the staging and acting were both better than the play because it was encumbered by the novel it was based around)
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First up was Mozart's string quartet No.14 in G major, which Mozart dedicated to Haydn, and is often nicknamed "Spring" for reasons that escape me but is as good an ekename as any, I suppose. The added texture and punctuation from the gut strings and short bows brought out the arrangement of this quartet as a team of four soloists playing tag, rather than the more usual mini-orchestra preferred by Haydn. I'd nickname this Mozart's "watch me juggle one audience and four soloists in G major". It demonstrates to me how well Mozart understood human nature in both performers and audience. Performers who're treated as soloists are more likely to give a piece everything they can. Audiences tend not to pay attention at the beginning of any piece/concert and often need to be prompted to applause at the end, so Mozart structured each movement as intro → what he wanted to say → the attention seeking outro. There are performances of this online but none reminiscent of the Chiaroscuro Quartet performance I heard, however this appears to be a legal upload from the Cleveland Quartet, 30mins utu (ETA: although I prefer this recording by Quatuor Mosaiques, 34mins utu).
Next was Haydn's string quartet Opus 76, No.2 in THE SADDEST OF ALL KEYS [/Spinal Tap] but with massive cheating, nicknamed Fifths because of the falling fifths at the beginning, while the third movement is inexplicably ekenamed the Witches Minuet (so think witches doing 18th century courtly dancing... or not). Haydn = crowd-pleasers which are basically indestructible by performers of even an average standard. It's good but suffered for me by being placed after the Mozart, because of my personal preferences. This is the first movement, 10mins utu, and should have side-bar links to 2/4 and 3-4/4, and it's being played by Quatuor Mosaiques on period instruments but the sound quality seems to have suffered noticeably in places from file compression (so if you like it then buy the original, obv).
Last and definitively most final was Schubert's string quartet No.14 in THE SADDEST OF ALL KEYS, nicknamed Death and the Maiden, which Schubert wrote while dying young from an incurable bout of Romanticism [/first he composed then he decomposed]. My favourite thing about this Top String Quartet Fave is that it presumably prevented Schubert writing more bloody lieder. I spent much of the performance contemplating the audience's pleasingly varied fashion choices, and trying not to cough (boredom coughing - the curse of classical music lovers everywhere). There'll be a gazillion versions of this proliferating on utu like aural anaesthetics and, frankly, even thinking about them is killing my brain cells so you'll have to take a punt on finding it yourselves. [/unpopular opinion #36428718]
During the Haydn I'd been thinking it was a string-snapper, and of the cost of gut strings and wondering if that counted as a composer's callous disregard for performers and their concerns, but nothing untoward happened... until halfway through Schubert's Death and the Violin, when the quartet had to retire backstage while one of the fiddle players restrung and retuned. /heh
- Lady Anna: All at Sea, is a play based on the novel Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope but placed within a framing story of Trollope's sea voyage to Australia. The play was written by Craig Baxter as a commission for the Trollope Society in 2015 so the author didn't have a wholly free choice of material but he's stitched together a coherent story that fits into a couple of hours and any emotional whiplash in the second half is mostly Trollope's fault. It's not a Great Play and doesn't, imo, have much to say about the human condition but it's good enough that it'll probably be regularly revived by Trollope fandom. The cast of seven share fifteen recurring roles between them with surprising ease, and in this touring production all the players were more than competent (although two of the three young persons did need to project better at the very beginning but to be fair I saw this in an unusually large auditorium for the provinces and younger actors often take a while to adjust to the space). The staging was glorious. There was excellent use of on stage space and entrances/exits. The costumes were simple but appropriate to suggest the time period, with only the exchange of one or two simple props to indicate when one actor swapped between two roles and that was enough. The set was splendid (? by Libby Watson ?). The backdrop and wings were dressed with oversized fading and yellowed manuscript so the action was clearly taking place within the pages of a book and the mind of an author. There were faded pastel covered oversized books suspended from above and piles of books of varying heights scattered about the stage, which became doorsteps or chairs and tables or stepping stones across a river. There were very few other props and the actors smoothly produced, rearranged, and removed everything themselves with the assistance of very short musical interludes between scenes. The music was interesting and not intrusive but didn't stand out to me. Overall I enjoyed Lady Anna: All at Sea and the audience applause at the end indicated general pleasure, although I feel compelled to add that many of us had probably only paid £15 for front stalls seats. (4/5 but the staging and acting were both better than the play because it was encumbered by the novel it was based around)
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/598843.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.