Munro, Smith, Berlin and Dean - Review

Thanks to the lovely people at CT, I had tickets to the Chamber Music New Zealand gig last night. For those of you local, the Smith is ex-concertmaster of the NZSO, Wilma Smith. The programme was interesting. Kicked off with Mozart Piano Quartet in Gmin K478. Regular readers will know my dislike for Mozart. This one was no different, I keep thinking Mozart's like a pretty but vacuous chick, good to look at but ultimately you have to talk to her, and it's all downhill from there. Usual Mozart motifs, repetition, kinda dancey vibe, and when he feels the variation has gone on enough - he hammers the main theme. I thought it was well played. But certainly not what I was there for.

I got the feeling that this was a young quartet, not so much hesitancy as enjoying the novelty of playing together. And this was apparent in the second piece, the Copland (Piano Quartet 1950). I really enjoyed this piece. Interesting, quirky and challenging. All the things I like in classical music, and all the things missing from the Mozart (yeah I know I should stop harping on about it, but meh!). I should buy more Copland as I like everything I have of his. And ELP covered him. There ya go prog-readers, a hook-in for you lot and evidence I do listen to pre-1980s prog.

The second half was the Schumann Piano Quartet in Eb Opus 47. Now I'm not the biggest Schumann fan either (jeez i'm a picky bastard), but this was great. Again with the interesting rhythms, but more lyricism than the Copland. As you'd expect from Schumann.

Performance was excellent, I got the feeling there was a bit of unsure playing in the Schumann, but the excellence of the Copland more than made up for it. Excellent balance as well. Well recommended.

B.