The annual Mozartfest in Bath is nearly halfway through, and we are going to as much of it as is practical. We each went to one concert given by the Vienna String Sextet, and agreed that in general they give beauty of sound priority over dramatic effect, although I found at times that the tone of one of the violas differed from that of the other players. (My comments may be biased though by my location towards the left-hand end of one of the front rows).
The concert I attended, on Saturday morning, began with Mozart’s string quintet K.515, which was followed by an arrangement by one of the sextet of Beethoven’s piano sonata Op. 101. Much of this lent itself happily to this new scoring, particularly in the fugal passages, but I did miss the percussive effects the piano can achieve and at times it seemed rather bottom-heavy (perhaps due again to my location).
In fact the Vienna String Sextet have a line in rescoring works for their forces, and not long ago on Radio 3 I heard them play an arrangement of Berg’s piano sonata, which inevitably came out sounding in parts like some of Verklärte Nacht that got away. This time they were performing Verklärte Nacht itself. I know I wasn’t the only person who came to the concert because of this, and to judge by the audience reaction it was the highlight of the morning for a number of others. It confirmed my preference for the original string sextet version over the arrangement for string orchestra; I feel it has greater intensity. (Tomorrow Radio 3 is broadcasting another performance the sextet gave of it last night in London, together with some Brahms). After that, we didn’t have an encore, but Friday night’s audience were treated to Roses from the South. I’m sorry that it’s the sextet’s last season – I suppose I shan’t hear them again. The Guardian’s review of the concert can be found here.
People were still talking about the Schoenberg when I returned to the Assembly Rooms last night to hear Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper perform Mozart, Haydn and Wolf, including a few songs in my own repertoire. This recital definitely took off in the second half. In the first half, Holzmair contended in the Haydn with English texts and some ornamentation that took him out of his usual range. And the combined talents of Mozart, Holzmair and Cooper could not override the fact that the text of the cantata K471 is essentially the Masons patting themselves on the back because one of their number had been honoured by the emperor for services to metallurgy!
The second half was a selection of Wolf’s Mörike settings, which showed Holzmair at his best and gave Imogen Cooper a chance to shine too. They included a number of Wolf’s most famous settings, but this didn’t pull in a large audience. Perhaps Wolf still isn’t that well known to the concert-going public, despite the anniversary last year. Or maybe we were just spoilt for choice this week.