Reviews

Quartetto di Venezia

Friends of Music Achieve Another High Point
25 Years After Its Start

by June S April

A full house, enthusiastic applause and a standing ovation last Sunday afternoon were testimonials to an excellent program that closed Newtown Friends of Music's 2002-03 season, its silver anniversary. Not only did the afternoon's guest musicians, Quartetto di Venezia, choose a program of wonderfully melodic pieces to perform, but the performance was also flawless in its presentation.
This is the quartet's second tour of the United States and it is a whirlwind, coast-to-coast, heavily booked schedule. Theirs is an international reputation, having received positive acclaim from performances hosted in Japan, Latin America, Europe, and South Korea. They have made numerous recordings, including two Beethoven Quartets, Opus 18 and 59 (both number 3), which share proceeds with UNICEF and Il Canale.
The Italian composers Luigi Boccherini and Verdi were both honored during the April 6 concert in the auditorium of Newtown's Edmond Town Hall, the former with a performance of his Quartet in A Major, Opus 8, Number 6, and the latter with Quartet in E minor.
Markland Taylor observed in his program notes that Haydn and Boccherini fathered the style of music we know as chamber music. The nature of the program's five pieces served as a musical overview of 200 years of the Italian contribution to this genre, which was appropriate considering the original intent in the founding of Newtown Friends of Music was to bring chamber music to Connecticut.
There is always so much to be discovered through music. Many in the audience, including this reviewer and the aforementioned Mr Taylor had never heard of the composer of one of the quartets.
Antonio Bazzini (1818 - 1897) was a highly regarded violinist and composer that time seems to have pushed to one side. His Concerto in E flat Major, Opus 76, Number 3, was absolutely beautiful. And the lyrical operas of Puccini are in part a debt to Bazzini, who happened to be one of Puccini's music teachers. That the short piece for strings, I Crisantemi (Chrysantemums), should be played following Bazzini's Quartet was fitting.
There are some thematic hints of the ever-popular Four Seasons that Antonio Vivaldi is most known for (thanks to some movies) in the Quartet in G Major, RV 151, "alla Rustica." The performance by the Quartetto di Venezia was mesmerizing and uplifting. They were as one, yet each instrument, each "voice", so to speak, is of equal importance.
The years of playing, rehearsing, knowing and clearly liking one another have created a level of sharing magnificent music that is all too rare. The eagerness with which the four musicians performed an encore, a non-Italian work by Dmitri Shostakovich - the Polka from a piece called "The Age of Gold" - only affirmed their love of music. Its comical nature brought smiles to the audience and the technical mastery brought a final burst of appreciative applause.