Tokyo String Quartet

I attended a concert by the Tokyo String Quartet in the Perth Concert Hall with my friend K last night and had a great time. This was part of the Musica Viva series that K and I have subscribed to for the past couple of years. It was the last concert of the series for the year, and a good end to the year, I thought.

They played Haydn’s String Quartet in G minor, op 74 no 3, ‘Rider’, Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet no 16, and Brahms’ String Quartet in C minor, op 51 no 1. Being almost entirely uneducated in music and music appreciation, I’m afraid I can’t really review the music in any useful way. I know what I like and what I don’t like, and that’s it. I liked last night’s music. (The music reviewer from our local rag usually sits across the aisle from us, but he wasn’t there last night. Pity, I would have liked to have seen what his verdict was. The quartet “is regarded as one of the supreme chamber music ensembles ofthe world and is now considered to be at the height of its powers.” I didn’t see or hear anything for me to argue against this, but of course this assessment is from me, a music illiterate.)

From the first notes of the Haydn piece I sat up and enjoyed every minute. The musicians themselves were a joy to watch. They were so obviously a team. I was particularly impressed by their instruments, all made by Antonio Stradivari and known as the ‘Paganini Quartet’ because they were formerly owned by the violin virtuoso Nicolò Paganini. The oldest instrument was a violin made in 1680! The other violin was made in 1727, and its player informed us that Paganini called it ‘The Elephant’ because it was somewhat larger and had a deeper register than the older violin. The viola, made in 1731, was particularly impressive because it is one of only six (or was it eight?) violas ever made by Stradivari. The cello was made in 1736, when Stradivari was 90 years old! I enjoyed myself imagining who would have touched and played them in all those years. It’s wonderful that such works of art are still being used and are not locked away in a museum… but imagine the insurance costs!

The performance of the Peter Sculthorpe string quartet was a world premiere – the first time the String Quartet No 16 has been played. It was written especially for the Tokyo String Quartet, commissioned by Julian Burnside, QC (who has done a lot of work to support asylum seekers and refugees in Australia), and inspired by the book From Nothing to Zero: Letters from Refugees in Australia’s Detention Centres. Knowing this made the music more meaningful for me, and the first movement, Loneliness, I thought was particularly beautiful. On a lighter note, I learned last night that a cello can make the sounds a seagull makes! (It was uncanny, just like the sound seagulls make wheeling overhead.)

At the end of the performance I noticed that some in the audience stamped their feet in approval, demanding an encore performance. Is this a Perth thing? I’ve noticed this at practically every concert I have attended in the Perth Concert Hall, regardless of the type of music. It doesn’t seem so strange when it’s a Michelle Shocked concert, for example, but it always seems a bit incongruous to me, after the oh-so-proper music at a Musica Viva concert, for people in suits and pearl sets (many in the audience, not me, though! I happily go in jeans) to be stamping their feet and yelling “encore!”

For their encore, they played the second movement of Dvořák’s String Quartet No.12 “American”, Op. 96. It was beautiful, and I might just have to seek out a recording of it. Time to try the new Australian iTunes shop, perhaps?

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