Sydney Mozart Society | Flinders Quartet
October 23, 2024, The Concourse Concert Hall, Chatswood, NSW
MENDELSSOHN Capriccio for string quartet in E minor, Op.81 no.3
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in B-flat major, Op.18 no.6
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F minor, Op.80
Elizabeth Sellars (violin), Wilma Smith (violin), Helen Ireland (viola), Zoe Knighton (cello)
Travelling to this concert my mind wandered back a few years when I was in Germany and a wonderful string quartet, based in Berlin, caught a train down to Leipzig to give a superb recital in the Gewandhaus Mendelssohn-Saal and on completion of the concert they returned to Berlin by train. It reinforced my knowledge of how difficult it is for great Australian chamber groups to ply their trade as distance between our main centres is the tyranny!
So it was with great pleasure to see so many of Sydney’s chamber music going audience attend the Melbourne-based Flinders Quartet in the distinctive acoustic of the Concourse Concert Hall in Chatswood.
The program had two works by Mendelssohn and the quartet seemed so perfectly at ease with this music, strong, intense, muscular and then contrasted with music that is tender, calm, evocative and well, romantic.
The Capriccio E minor was most memorable for its wonderful fugue and all the performers revelled in it intricacies. A delightful little work.
The f minor quartet gave the four players moments to shine. In the fast movements the energy and excitement generated from 2nd violinist Wilma Smith was a joy for all and she was matched throughout this work by the violist Helen Ireland – supportive here, shining through when the music demands and always the fulcrum. Cellist Zoe Knighton laid a perfect base for the other lines to build on and her melodic work always pleased the ear.
This year Elizabeth Sellars has joined the Flinders as their 1st violin. Sellars is renowned as a chamber musician without peer in this country and in this concert she showed why she is held in such esteem. Delicate solo lines and phrases that interacted with others and in particular the opening of the Beethoven with cellist Knighton suggest this will be a great new start for the quartet.
When listening to a new lineup for the first time different thoughts float by and one is that this group allows individual flair to shine through and also the self can seem to disappear as in the transcendent performance of the slow movement of the Beethoven where hushed phrases of no string vibrato were used and then that magic was followed by an ever increasing use of string vibrato. Such thoughtfulness is testament to the maturity of this quartet.
I am sure many at the Mozart Society concert hope they return for more musicmaking soon.
