Some visiting delights of Amsterdam

It's a little different with mates.  I was recording so nabbed the front of house spot to turn on and off the recorder and get some good pics so I was right under the eyes of the Dudok Quartet.  Marie-Louise viola is staying with us and we are driving the group frequently so I would be watched.  Suffice to say it was so easy with Dudok Quartet Amsterdam.  They were such a huge pleasure from the start, both musically and as entertainment.  This was casual with chatty and informative introductions and a group ethic that the audience is part of the performance.  Then they started on Mozart and it was alive, mobile, energetic from the start.  Judith spoke of her playing this as an early piece with David ~age 18 and how their teacher had wondered at their choice, given it's demanding and so exposed.  They soon won a competition playing it.  Whatever, I was stunned by the performance form the first bars.  But they play all manner of styles and welcome the modern.  The second piece was a recent original by composer Holly Harrison who was in the audience. That was another competition winner.  All pizz bass-like lines (with all manner of cello pizz techniques to all four fingers), loud dissonance that verged on noise, modern sounds of pop and jazz, seeming to verge on delirium at times.  Then a composer I didn't recognise, Grażyna Bacewicz, with her post-WW2 String Quartet no.4.  I found it worthy and attractive.  It didn't catch me quite like the other two, but I must listen again.  As a short encore, they played their arrangement of Tchaikovsky Piano prelude no.17 with the most delicate and lovely violin from Judith.  Joyful and a delight but also a concert of considerable intent and superb performance, both as individuals and stunningly as a group.  They talk of spending most days together when not performing, in their home studio.  It shows.  Just delightful and superbly capable.

The Dudok String Quartet Amsterdam performed at the Albert Hall for the Canberra International Music Festival.  Dudok are Judith Van Driel and Marleen Wester (violins), Marie-Louise de Jong (viola) and David Faber (cello).  Holly Harrison composed the recent commission, Balderdash,  BTW the quartet is named for Willem Marinus Dudok (1884-1974), Dutch modernist architect born in Amsterdam.