Webern and Schubert: Belcea Quartet (Corina Belcea-Fisher (violin), Laura Samuel (violin), Krzysztof Chorzelski (viola), Antoine Lederlin (cello)) Wigmore Hall, London, 12.5.2008 (BBr)

Anton von Webern: Five Movements, op.5 (1909)
Franz Schubert: String Quartet in D minor, Der Tod und das Mädchen, D810 (1824)


What better way to pass a lovely summer lunchtime than in the company of two masterpieces of Viennese chamber music, heard in one of the most beautiful halls in London, with the best sound for chamber music, played by one of the best British quartets at work today? This concert is your answer.

Putting these two Viennese classics together was an inspired piece of programming. The Webern, an early work but which puts expressionistic gestures alongside the most glorious lyricism, was given a performance of supreme confidence, the players revelling in the many changes of mood, timbre, emotion, making it seem like a big quartet instead of five disparate pieces. They launched into the first piece with a wild abandon, following it with the most delicate and exquisite pianissimo playing in the beautiful second piece. This set the tone for the performance which was romantic and full bloodied.

Schubert wrote his Quartet at the time he was told he had contracted syphilis and he would have known that his days were numbered. This music rages, storms, screams, and is really a Totentanz of a living man. There’s lyrical music, of course, but it is the heartfelt torment of the soul which fills this work. The Belcea Quartet attacked the music with a ferocity which riveted you to your seat and  screwed up the tension from the very first moment. The variations of the slow movement were well characterised, there was no respite in the scherzo and the headlong rush of the finale was breathtaking. By the end the temperature had risen well in excess of the 21°C we had been enjoying upon entering the hall.

If the Belcea Quartet isn’t one of the finest Quartets at work today, I’ll eat my sunhat.

Bob Briggs


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