Although the Piano Quartet repertoire is not as seemingly unlimited as that for string quartet or even piano trio combinations, the Villani Piano Quartet compiled a superbly balanced programme for last night’s concert.
This is the third Piano Quartet ensemble featured in the Christopher’s Classics series within twelve months and all three have proved to be well worth the ticket price. Each group has also included a Brahms Quartet, and the Villanis played the same G minor work that we heard last May from Diedre Irons and NZSO string players.
Villani Piano Quartet L to R; Sarah Spence, Marko Pop Ristov, Emma Dann, Flavio Villani Photo: Supplied
This latest concert began with Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E flat Op. 16, originally written for piano and winds when the composer was twenty-six. The wind parts were adapted (and added to) for strings a year or two later and, although the work was published in the same year as Beethoven’s first group of String Quartets, it hasn’t quite got all of the innovative originality of those works.
The Villani Piano Quartet’s performance communicated the piece’s engaging and attractive qualities, but I couldn’t help feeling that everything was a bit too carefully controlled. The Rondo finale in particular, for all its lively and appealing melodic, rhythmic and textural content, wanted more abandon and spontaneity.
Even so, there’s no denying the quartet's accomplished technical and musical excellence. Balance among the four players was ideally judged with every strand of the texture played and projected with finesse.
Flavio Villani’s lightness of touch in the piano part certainly enabled the string textures to be easily heard and all three of the other players worked together with superbly considered similarity of style.
Vibrato was relatively restrained and unity of phrasing was clearly evident. It’s just that I couldn’t help wishing for them to “let go” a bit, especially in that third movement.
The two movements of the Peteris Vasks quartet that followed displayed similar restraint. This fascinating work was introduced by the ensemble’s cellist, Sarah Spence.
There seems to be an increasing, and very welcome, tendency for performers to engage with their audiences, and Spence’s informative and very personal perspective was perfectly judged in a way that enhanced the listening experience for a piece that few, if any, in the audience will have been familiar with.
The Villanis’ performance, just three days after this Latvian composer’s seventy-second birthday, was captivating.
Their clear belief in the quality of the music was communicated effectively so that, along with the spoken introductory comments, the audience responded to this 2001 composition with genuine interest and warmth. Although these two movements (of the work’s six) are tonally based, Vasks’ use of diverse articulation and textures, as well as some stridently discordant effects, keep the music absorbing and unpredictable for its full duration.
From eerie glissandi and sul ponticello effects to liltingly rhythmic and melodic juxtapositions, the players projected expressive mastery throughout. But, once again, the dramatic flourish that ended the second movement was held in check as if the players wanted to ensure that there was no chance of any technical blemish.
In general, fine and consistent as this quartet’s playing was throughout the concert, I missed an element of risk-taking.
This was particularly evident in the great Brahms G Minor Quartet where, in comparison to last year’s performance of the same work by the Irons-Leppänen-Joyce-Joyce quartet, the music-making was praiseworthy rather than compelling.
Unfortunately, that earlier performance was exceptional to the extent that I can’t even listen to famous recordings without missing the charisma and thrill that I experienced then. Comparisons are odious, I know, but when the same work appears in the same venue and same series within such a short time, it’s almost inevitable.
The Villanis gave us an excellent, well-rehearsed, often exciting interpretation of Brahms’ masterpiece, with notably virtuoso playing and, again, Sarah Spence’s introduction was personal and helpful, but the performance itself just didn’t quite reach my elevated (perhaps unfairly so) expectations.
Technically and musically, the playing was hard to fault. Textural contrasts were beautifully judged and the panache of the final movement had my foot tapping, even if its gypsy abandon seemed slightly too reserved.
