MUSIC REVIEW: Kelemen Quartet (Barnabas Kelemen, Katalin Kokas, Gabor Homoki. Akos Takacs); music by Mozart, Kodaly, Haydn and Bartok
Michael Fowler Centre, March 14
This was the final music event of the 2014 New Zealand Festival but it was really a Chamber Music New Zealand concert, and it featured a young Hungarian string quartet destined to go places.
Although only in existence for around three years – infancy for this most sophisticated form of music making – already there is a hairtrigger technical assurance to the playing, and each player is a stunning player in his or her own right.
To make things difficult on this tour, the cellist broke her arm in Sydney and was replaced by Akos Takacs.
But he fitted straight in; indeed he showed his qualities with a marvellously inflected playing of the folk-ike melody in the third movement of Bartok’s Fourth String Quartet.
In fact, it was this quartet that showed the qualities of these young musicians.
Marvellously understanding – not surprising – they offered playing of such assurance, that every strand was revealed. Rhythms were infectious and the sound was just right.
And that was no easy task; the Michael Fowler Centre is a huge space, and for those sitting back a little the sound would have been somewhat dispersed and diffuse.
This affected the impact of the opening Mozart – the String Quartet in G K465 “Dissonance” – and, to a lesser extent, the Serenade for Two Violins and Viola by Kodaly.
Maybe my ears adjusted, but after the interval the String Quartet in D Op. 20 No. 4 by Haydn had a wonderful esprit, and that Bartok performance was quite something.
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