Last Thursday evening's Live From The RNCM concert featured members of The Elias Quartet and The RNCM Strings, as they took to their scoially-distanced places in the RNCM's Concert Hall for this live streaming performance.
The first piece, and indeed the showpiece of the concert was Beethoven's epic and hauntingly beautiful String Quartet no 14 in C#min (op131), here arranged for string ensemble.
Completed in 1826, this was Beethoven's penultimate and favourite of his String Quartets; and indeed many contemporary composers showered the work with praise, including Schumann and Schubert. Sadly though, Beethoven did not live to see the first performance of the quartet.
In this ensemble arrangement, the four parts of the quartet (violin I, violin II, Viola and cello) are given much fuller sounds and when required for a change of timbre and tonal quality, played as a solo instrument by a member of the Elias Quartet.
The work is about 40 minutes long and is written in 7 movements intended to be played continuously. , thus making the task of playing this piece akin to a sonata or symphony in both length and skill required. It is rather an avant-garde piece of music too for its time; Beethoven was always a forward thinker and innovator, and to this day, this quartet remains one of the most advanced thematically and dramatic pieces of lyrical chamber music. Starting with an adagio (unusual in itself), the piece is one long and unsuspecting dramatic and dynamic climax to the final sonata-form movement (allegro) which copies the main theme from the first movement thus giving the piece a kind of narrative found in the later writings of the Romantic period.
The concert finished with a shorter piece, and a complete change of mood, but nevertheless, complimentary, an arrangement by Donald Grant of The Elias Quartet and Deputy Head Of Chamber Music at The RNCM, of the traditional Scottish Folk song, 'The Witches Of Leanachan'. This started again slowly and evocatively, and combining distinctly Scottish sounds with more classical forms, it moved into a faster section and a fantastic finale. Grant's arrangement being modern but still retaining that feel of traditionalism, which worked very nicely.
Of course both pieces were played with skill and passion by the whole ensemble, and it was a delight and a pleasure to have been able to listen to "live" music - once again with me applauding loudly and enthusiastically at my computer screen at the end of each piece.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 22/11/20
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