Allegri on fine form

REVIEW - ALLEGRI STRING QUARTET
Parish Church of St John-At-Hampstead
by JAN TOPOROWSKI

THE Allegri String Quartet is now in its 52nd year. Not that one would believe it, from the playing and youthful demeanour of its members. Gone is the collaboration between first violinist, Peter Carter, and cellist Bruno Schrecker that made them one of the outstanding string quartets of the 1970s and 1980s.
Its current players all joined in the last 10 years. They bring a youthful enthusiasm that was surely tested in the concert that they gave as part of the Hampstead and Highgate Festival on last Wednesday in St John’s Parish Church in Hampstead. Their programme started off with Schubert’s C minor Quartettsatz (well-known as a popular filler in concerts and recordings).
This was followed Webern’s Langsamer Satz, a slow, intense expression of its composer’s spiritual and sexual longing for his future wife: very much the kind of music that we associate with late romantic decadence in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, sugar that is undoubtedly bad for the teeth.
But the real test for the Quartet was to come. Dmitri Shostakovitch’s 11th string quartet in F minor is a spiky, rhythmic piece through which runs a vein of melancholy: The quartet was written in memory of the violinist Vassily Shirinsky had premiered most of Shostakovich’s earlier quartets.
The Allegri Quartet despatched its technical difficulties with ease. An even greater test was the final work, Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 132. This is one of his quartets that demands not only technical assurance, but also perfect ensemble and an intellectual understanding of this great music that Beethoven could never hear, because of his deafness, and which therefore remains more abstract than more challenging later music. The Allegri Quartet rose to the challenge and gave a steady, virtuosic performance.
There is no doubt that latest recruit, the first violin Daniel Rowland, brings to the quartet a silvery tone and ease in his playing that is distinctive and enhances the music. The other players, second violin Rafael Todes, viola player Dorothea Vogel, and cellist Pál Banda, were equally on top of their parts. Intonation was perfect even where left hands had to do a lot of shifting around.
Together they have all the makings of this quartet’s past greatness, and will renew its reputation as their ensemble matures. All credit is due to the Hampstead and Highgate Festival for bringing to Camden young performers who take on and renew a tradition of distinguished music making.