2x4

Two string quartets, one steamroller.  This was a lunchtime concert in the Juliet Room at Verity Lane and it was a great space with a responsive audience and a nice clean sound.  Other than the steamroller, but that's for later.  First up was Quatuor va Kuijk playing Mozart String Quartet K458 ‘The Hunt’.  It was mightily different from the French music we'd heard a few days before at the winery.  Mozart is just perfect of course, but so was the quartet: immense delicacy, huge dynamics, lots of eyes for effective communication, just the most correct intonations and passages passed with endless simplicity and aptness.  It was in this space with this music that I could feel this group.  Then something different, even if Haydn String Quartet op.76 no 5 apparently was written in response to 'the Hunt'.  Haydn was not so much a thing of Mozartian delicacy but of power and attack and strength.  It was such a different presence for the alternative quartet. But then that steamroller.  Verity Lane is in town and work is ongoing in the old Sydney and Melbourne buildings and sadly some was scheduled for this day.  Ya gotta laugh or otherwise you'd cry.  I'm sure AM didn't find it so funny but they carried on bravely and effectively and I can only admire their perseverence.  Still, a powerful and driven performance.  I was recording and expected to drop out the bottom end, but with a close mic it wasn't nearly so evident.  So the comparison of two quartets was fascinating and informative but not as reliable as it might have been.  But fabulous none the less.

Quatuor van Kuijk and Alma Moodie Quartet performed at Verity Lane for CIMF2023.  QvK comprise Nicolas Van Kuijk and Sylvain Favre-Bulle (violons), Emmanuel François (viola) and Anthony Kondo (cello).  Alma Moodie Quartet comprise Kristian Winther and Anna da Silva Chen (violin), Dana Lee (viola) and Thomas Marlin (cello).