A sensitive delight: they're young and yet so mature
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday June 24, 2009
FLINDERS QUARTETVerbrugghen Hall, June 22THE Flinders Quartet have a growing reputation as courageous and sensitive interpreters of Australian chamber music.For a young quartet from Melbourne, it is as good a reputation as any to claim when breaking into the highly competitive world of professional chamber ensembles. But for this concert they focused on music from the heart of the Western Romantic tradition. It was an impressive display of consistent and mature musicianship, and a delight to listen to.Brahms's String Sextet No. 2 in G, op. 36 opens with just the right amount of deliberate awkwardness to make the violin phrase it introduces seem impossibly airy and free. The first violin, Erica Kennedy, spanned the melody's intervals with ease, as if unfolding a carefully wrapped parcel, before handing the precious thing to the cellist Zoe Knighton.The Scherzo was as light as a feather, the Adagio had a suitably stately poise and the Finale built to an exciting climax where pizzicato and legato passages wove together in a rich and delicious melange of sound.Some of this richness was, no doubt, due to the Flinders' two guests, the violist Keith Crellin and the cellist Janis Laurs, who not only made up the numbers but provided a discreet but warm accompaniment, fitting in perfectly with the quartet's distinctive tone.Their role continued in Brahms's String Sextet No. 1 in B flat, underpinning the soulful cello melody that begins Brahms's excursion into this relatively rare scoring. The violist Helen Ireland played the theme of the second movement with a wonderfully dour sense of resignation, paving the way for the miraculous modulation mid-theme, which offers a glimpse of the sun before it resolves.The spring was reset for the Scherzo, and the final movement brought the concert to a deservedly triumphant conclusion.There had obviously been some debate about the order of play. Presenting the two works counter-chronologically did not, to me, provide any new revelations, except demonstrating what a great treat it is to hear these two works played side by side, and so well.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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