By Clive O'Connell
MUSIC
QUARTETS AT SUNSET
Debussy Quartet
Collins Street Baptist Church
October 13
As scheduled, the festival's chamber music content continues to examine the string quartets of Haydn, both in this Sunset series and also at the Quartetthaus recitals in South Melbourne. Beginning this year's retrospective sequence in the Baptist Church, the Debussy players moved into questionable territory: the Opus 3 works, probably the products of Roman Hofstetter, Haydn's contemporary and fervent admirer. These musicians should hardly have been challenged by the felicitous F Major quartet from the set, which boasts a popular Serenade, but the performance had little character, imbalance and insecure delivery peppering the outer movements in a reading of little interest.
The Debussy Quartet performing at the Melbourne Festival.Credit: Jean-Claude_Bruet
Still, the following rendition of American composer Marc Mellits' String Quartet No. 3 gave the players a more flashy canvas to colour; viola Vincent Deprecq and cello Fabrice Bihan rendering fine service through this 2008 construct's easy listening pages. The work is subtitled Tapas and, in mimicry of that culinary tourist trap, comprises short contrasting movements of naive construction and colour in neo-minimalist mode, quickly consumed and easily forgotten.
The ensemble reserved its best for the evening's focus, the Quartet No. 4 by Shostakovich. While the work tests all players, the two lower lines again made a continuously favourable impact; here balanced by the violins of Christophe Collette and Marc Vieillefon collaborating with fine sympathy in the opening movement. Not too emotionally draining, the score came across with security and persuasive fluency right through the muted storms and meditations of the middle Andantino/Allegretto to the wrenching final bars.