If Haydn is the acknowledged ‘father’ of the string quartet, did he conceive of the form or simply nurture it to maturity? If the latter, then who were the quartet’s earlier ancestors? Appearing as part of the St Stephen’s recital series, curated by Briar Goessi, the Melbourne Baroque Orchestra Classical Quartet presented an intriguing, historically focussed program entitled ‘The Emergence of the String Quartet’, designed to answer such questions.
The warm acoustic of the church enveloped the appreciative audience on a bitterly cold Melbourne afternoon, and the quartet, made up of Cameron Jamieson, Meg Cohen, Susanna Ling and Rosanne Hunt, revelled in the atmosphere, playing with elegant, sophisticated and stylish commitment in repertoire both familiar and entirely unknown to most.
Hunt introduced us to the program, its genesis and its transformation from a standard Haydn–Mozart–Beethoven outing into a fascinating musical adventure taking us across most of the eighteenth century. It was clear that both the process of work selection (including read-through sessions of never-seen-before scores from never-heard-of composers) and the presentation of them in public were enjoyed equally by the performers and audience.
The program opened with the first movement of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sonata à Quattro from 1725, the last year of his life, and some seven years before Haydn was born. We are at the height of the Baroque and yet “senza cembalo”, without continuo supporting the harmony. This was truly in a new style, though some tell-tale figurations were true to its period. It was disappointing to hear only this single movement, but there was a lot of progress still to be made on our journey.
Quartets from Mozart and Haydn formed the backbone of this program, though we were also treated to works from two lesser-known masters in Franz Asplmayr, from the generation before Mozart, and Johann Albrechtsberger, an almost exact contemporary of Haydn’s (and one of Beethoven’s teachers). These provided valuable context for Mozart’s very first published string quartet, written in 1770, when he was 14 years old, and Haydn’s op. 20, no. 2 quartet from just two years later. The chance to compare the mid-career Haydn (he was 40) with the upcoming prodigy was informative, but there were already hints of Mozart’s more mature style in the skipping phrases in the first violin and the seemingly frivolous theme of the Rondeau.
It is in Haydn’s Opus 20 quartets that we see the real solidifying of the ‘modern’ quartet form, especially the equality between the instruments and the variety in textures. No. 2 in C opens, surprisingly, with a virtuosic flourish from the cello, accompanied by viola, and the cello is pushed to the front on several more occasions before the concluding fugue, with its bold and exciting finale.
Hunt’s playing throughout was of the finest quality; subtle and delicate when required, but strongly present when in the spotlight. The often filling-in role of a viola is largely eliminated in a string quartet, and here Ling’s playing was sonorous and beautifully meshed in tone with her colleagues, especially in the lower register. Jamieson and Cohen were perfectly matched in their violin parts, and the quartet as a whole brought to vivid life even that music which history has relegated to the second drawer.
It was a pity more of this unknown repertoire could not be fitted in, but the chance to hear some, alongside less commonly heard works from the masters, was a wonderful delight.
Reviewer Peter Campbell: Peter Campbell is a Melbourne-based musicologist, singer and composer who has published widely on Australia’s musical history. Since moving to Melbourne in 1999, Peter has sung with the early-music specialists Ensemble Gombert.
Albrechtsberger | Asplmayr | Beethoven | Cameron Jamieson | Haydn | Meg Cohen | Melbourne Baroque Orchestra | Mozart | Rosanne Hunt | Scarlatti | Susanna Ling
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Melbourne Baroque Orchestra acknowledges the sovereignty of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we perform and share our love of music. We acknowledge their Ancestors and Elders past and present.