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20 September 2010
What: CMNZ: Piers Lane and the Doric String Quartet
When: Saturday 15th August
Where: WEL Academy of Performing Arts
This partnership of CMNZ with the ROSL enabled the combination of the Doric Quartet and pianist Piers Lane to weave their magic.
Haydn’s String Quartet in D ‘The Lark’ with its silky opening soaring melody was given a new freshness and transparent feel. Haydn’s inventiveness and sense of humour were given licence with incredible attention to detail where textural hues and unity of statement gave new life to this perennial chestnut.
Bartók’s String Quartet No 3 is a very condensed work and as such is amazingly microscopic. It traversed harmonically adventurous and contrapuntally complex material inhabiting both a bleak internal and livelier external worlds. The array of instrumental techniques, included sul ponticello, col legno, glissandi and the Bartók pizzicato were done with virtuosic panache.
Piers Lane’s Chopin’s Nocturne Opus 55 No 2 had a rhapsodic feel to it with a very fluid left-hand avoiding monotony, while the right sang above for release in a developing melodic strand. Chopin's Ballade No 3 maintained the sense of fluidity as the work jostled between moods and themes; a distinct optimistic musical nature pervaded.
The Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor Opus 34 was a tour de force from beginning to end. Performed with a sense of dramatic poise and tension, sensuous and fiery, beautifully balanced the lush colours predominated; an exhilarating performance, what a lovely concert.
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