SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

City of London Festival 2008: Maxwell Davies, Goehr and Haas, Pavel Haas Quartet (Veronika Jaruskova (violin) – Marie Fuxová (violin) - Pavel Nikl (viola) – Peter Jarusek (cello)). St Andrew Holborn, London, 10.7.2008 (BBr)

Peter Maxwell Davies: A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Tymes (2004)
Alexander Goehr: Since Brass, Nor Stone… Fantasy for percussion and string quartet, op.80 (2008) (world première)
Pavel Haas: String Quartet No.2, From the Monkey Mountain (1925)


What a boon, of a lovely summer’s evening, to sit in a beautiful Christopher Wren Church, in the City of London, to listen to string quartets. The idea is a lovely one, but this evening there was a problem. Fascinating though this programme was, from where I was sitting, the very reverberant acoustic acted against the music.

All started well, the slow, quiet, opening of Maxwell Davies’s Sad Pavan... suiting the Church and the controlled playing of the quartet. Once the music became animated the sound became a muddle and I found it difficult to hear what, exactly, was going on. And so it was for the whole show.

Goehr’s new work suffered most because of his lavish use of percussion. This is a strong piece, as befits the title, but because he has written a scherzo movement, with short slower, more reflective, sections, coloured with lashings of percussion, the batterie simply overwhelmed the strings. The worst offender was the crotales, a bright and crisp sound but quite overpowering in this acoustic. There was a beautiful moment of repose where the quartet played a chorale-like idea accompanied by the gentle sound of small gongs which sounded gorgeous and the quiet coda was magical in its beauty. Otherwise it was a mess. Goehr has created an important work, we know he can write well for strings – his quartets prove this – and from what I could discern there was much to admire. I say again that I write about what I heard from where I was sitting – perhaps elsewhere in the Church it was clearer. When BBC Radio 3 broadcasts the recording it made this will not be a problem and I await a proper hearing.

Pavel Haas was a Jánaček pupil, who was sent to Theresienstadt (Terezin) by the Nazis and ultimately murdered in Auschwitz towards the end of the war. His 2^nd Quartet was inspired by the mountains near his home town of Brno and uses a percussionist in the dance finale of the work. This is a lovely piece, laid out in four big movements. The music is easy going, eminently approachable, but with three fast movements the acoustic ruined clarity. The percussion in the last movement was much more discreet than in Goehr’s piece – Haas only employs a drum kit and triangle – and thus it was better integrated into the texture.

The performances were all one could wish – what a fine ensemble this quartet is – and I am saddened that I cannot report more positively. Despite the beauty of the venue the performers deserved better than this, and perhaps for next year’s festival the matching of performers to venue might be better considered.

Bob Briggs


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