BWW Reviews: RELATIVITY Explores Works By Pairs Of Composers Who Are Related In Some Way

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Wednesday 11th November 2015

Relativity as a concept is best known through the work of Einstein, who played in a non-professional string quartet. He wasn't brilliant at it and, on one occasion, the first violin complained, "Albert, the problem with you is, you can't count".

It also relates to relating and there were a couple of relationships in the final concert of the Australian String Quartet season for this that played on that theme, and a few off stage relationships that gave the evening in the Town Hall extra resonance. Some string quartets stay together for decades, and may replace a member when death, sickness or a better offer removes a founder performer. Some quartets resemble George Washington's hatchet, which survives into the 21st century despite having had its head and haft replaced several times in the past two hundred years.

The ASQ began and prospered for many years, earning its right to call itself the 'Australian', then a replacement here and a replacement there, it still maintained the name and a performing style. Eventually, the management, which employs the musicians, brought in the established Tank Stream all female quartet and re-branded them as the ASQ. The recent complete collapse between one pair in the quartet and the other led to a not too amicable divorce which further complicated itself when the couple who were leaving left precipitately and prematurely. It is a bit of a soap opera as a gamba playing mate remarked. How to salvage a concert season, bring in a couple of friends, violinists Adam Chalabi and Graeme Jennings, whose years of experience and commitment meant that the four of them played with great skill together.

The change of program necessitated by the new line up was still an impressive evening. Fanny Mendelssohn, the sister of Felix, was a very capable composer, but very little of her music was probably ever heard outside the family concerts. Her E Flat Major string quartet was structurally and harmonically quite individual, with a rapid presto fugato that sounded like Bach, and may have reflected the importance that the Mendelssohns played in the promotion of Bach's music. The A minor Op. 13 of her slightly younger brother was given a first class reading, full of lively interchanges and melodic development.

The central works brought Greta Bradman on to the stage for a performance of Sea Chronicles by Paul Stanhope. Her year of study in Cardiff has brought something new and disquieting to her voice, a lower register of remarkable darkness of timbre and colour. The bright and stratospheric sound that most people cherish about her is still there, as her recent Rodelinda in Melbourne testifies, but this new depth is a real discovery. The voice enters the work over seesawing strings and narrates, through Australian poets' words, visions of the sea, and the death of a lifesaver. From the balcony of the Town Hall, her diction was not immaculate, and it was too dark to read the words included in the program, but it's certainly a work to hear again.

The second half of the concert began with Bradman and the quartet in a brief work by Peter Sculthorpe was Paul Stanhope's teacher. His Quartet No. 13, Island Dreaming, had Bradman intoning words from Torres Strait Islander songs. Here, the mysterious and unpolished sound she produced was mesmerising. And there is one more relationship, drawing this concert to its end.

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