East Neuk: Rasumovsky Day
Kilrenny Church & Crail Church, Fife.
Saturday was Rasumovsky Day at the 21st East Neuk Festival. In three concerts, spread three hours apart over two venues, each of Beethoven’s three middle period Op 59 Quartets – a groundbreaking collection commissioned by the violin-playing Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Rasumovsky – was rolled out by three successive ensembles.
That each quartet had its unique proponent was itself thrilling enough. The cliff-edge lunchtime volatility of Spain’s Cuarteto Quiroga in Op 59 No 1, answered by the mid-afternoon meaty intensity of the American Calidore Quartet in No 2, then took early evening flight with the virtuosic joie de vivre of Swedish-Norwegian string quartet Opus13.
Furthermore, each Rasumovsky was partnered by a non-Beethoven work intended to illuminate the contextual response, which the elemental theatrics of Spain’s short-lived Beethoven contemporary Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga’s Quartet No 3, the dichotomy of intellectual constructivism and expressive fluidity of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Arietta (UK premiere) and the heated, personalised Romanticism of Wilhelm Stenhammar’s A minor Quartet Op 25 respectively achieved.
Throw all that together and the result was an invigorating, at times intoxicating, complexity of stimuli that succeed superbly in attaining its goal, which was to reaffirm the extraordinary innovative advances Beethoven achieved between the masterful apprenticeship of his first Op 18 quartets (published 1801) and the assured and expansive inventiveness unveiled seven years later with the publishing of the Rasumovskys.
In Kilrenny Church, with Arriaga’s E flat Quartet trumpeting an opening theme brazenly reminiscent of Beethoven’s Op 18 No 1 (a performance frustratingly paused midway due to unseen disruption in the church’s rear balcony), the Cuarteto Quiroga proved themselves the perfect fit for the opening F major Rasumovsky. There’s an element of danger in their demeanour, a degree of raw imperfection – almost deliberately so in some aspects of tuning – that is magically offset by a single-minded togetherness. Such conflict lent a decisive edge to the performance, the rigour of Beethoven’s opening movement deliciously countered by suave Slavonic asides, the nimbleness of the Scherzo tamed by the broad lyrical sweep of the Adagio, the final Allegro brusque and resolute.
The action then moved to Crail Church, where the Calidore Quartet made the most of the E minor Rasumovsky’s darker hues. The fragmented rhetoric of the opening, gradually mustering an organic flow, elicited meaty ensemble playing from the Americans, a homogeneity recast as devotional calm in the sublime Molto Adagio. They were mesmerising in the off-kilter rhythms of the Scherzo with its pugnacious Russian references, imbuing the final Presto with all the jauntiness it calls for.
In advance of that, and introduced by the composer himself with the reassurance that “my piece isn’t scary!”, Turnage’s Arietta (an ENF co-commission) opens in the same hymn-like vein as the aforementioned Molto Adagio. It is, appropriately, a homage to Beethoven, the theme of its variations being a literal inversion of the Arietta used by Beethoven in his last Piano Sonata, Op 111. Its gaunt reverence, its gathering warmth, and those hints of neo-classicism coloured by spectral links to the past, gave purpose to its presence in the programme.
The same venue, Crail Church, later welcomed the ebullient Opus13 to round off Saturday’s musical triptych. It took a moment or two for Stenhammar’s substantial A minor Quartet to truly gather momentum, but when it did the performance matured to reveal a lusty allegiance to Brahms and Dvorak, even modal echoes of Ravel and nods to Sibelius. It was hard to ignore the slow movement theme’s unmistakable similarity to “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music, but there was much to enjoy in textures that ranged from emulating the whisper of a consort of viols to full-blown passion, and an ending that brimmed with mercurial whimsy.
Then to the last Rasumovsky, and a performance that had us clinging to the edge of our seats. It opened with bristling resolve, struck a graceful balletic note in the Andante con moto, before viewing the unruffled Minuet as an understated springboard to the final fugue, a hair-raising sprint to an explosive conclusion. The audience reacted instinctively, baying for more and receiving it in the form of a simple Swedish folk tune.
There was an unmistakable buzz to the whole day that was hard to ignore. Chamber music’s central canon has long been a factor in defining the East Neuk Festival. But this package, in particular the thought given to cross-referenced programming and comparative selection of artists, had something very special and enlightening to offer.
Ken Walton
(Pictured: Opus13 at Crail Church)