Webern nights

I made a belated first visit to the Wiltshire Music Centre recently to hear the Doric String Quartet, the Centre’s quartet in residence. The Centre has a lovely clear acoustic, though the interior of the concert hall is very spartan. I found my eye kept being drawn upwards to the complicated gantries on which the lighting is fixed.

Such a setting is rather apt for listening to Webern, though in fact we got one of his fruitier pieces, the Quartet of 1905, which formed the heart of the concert, after K499. After the interval there was Schubert’s quartet in G D887. My memory played a trick on me here and I didn’t remember the opening movement, though the other three were familiar enough. It was in the final movement that I felt the quartet came unstuck a little, as the stop-start opening melody didn’t settle into a tempo immediately.

I listened to much of the BBC’s day-long journey through Webern’s music on the 60th anniversary of his death. These days you are most likely to encounter Webern’s compositions in the concert hall in string quartet programmes, as in the concert above. This was a chance to get to know rarities such as the songs from the second decade of the 20th century, many of which are for voice and chamber ensemble. It was interesting to hear not only the complete works, but also to follow developments in style, as they were played in order of composition. And the performances were high quality, important in music which can so easily be ruined by carelessness in execution.

Until the evening other related music was programmed alongside the Webern pieces. I can understand not using Schoenberg or Berg, as this might have been a distraction, but there were some things I’d have liked to have heard: the Renaissance music which he studied, or archive recordings of Webern himself conducting. Perhaps I listened at the wrong times and some or all of these were played.