Press
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 27-04-2011
Padmore / Vignoles / Navarra Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
(Rated 5/ 5)
Reviewed by Michael Church
Monday, 2 May 2011
After 20 years of knocking about with the best in the business, the tenor Mark Padmore has some distinguished people to call on for a concert billed as “Mark Padmore and Friends”.
He also has a brilliant recipe. His penchant for programmes based on a “conversation between pieces” led him to pair Vaughan Williams and Ravel, partly because of their shared tastes and partly because of their friendship and the traumas of the First World War, in which both were medics on the front line.
Their relationship started when Vaughan Williams, feeling his music had become “lumpy and stodgy” and in need of some “French polish”, took lessons from Ravel in Paris; Ravel later declared that the Englishman was the only pupil he had “who did not end up sounding like Ravel”. Both men, says Padmore, tried to escape from the Teutonic idea of music as argument, and to create the sonic equivalent of impressionism.
Opening with Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grècques, Padmore and his pianist, Roger Vignoles, demonstrated just how effectively the French composer achieved that aim. While the piano wove delicate modal patterns, the voice soared gracefully above: each song, with its hint of folk cadences, was a perfectly-realised miniature. Vaughan Williams’s ripostes – “The New Ghost”, “The Sky Above the Roof” and his extraordinary “Procris” and “Menelaus” – were infinitely more interesting in terms of harmony and texture than his orchestral works; these songs could compare with Britten’s.
And what performances they got. Vignoles’s artistry as an accompanist is second to none, supporting and subtly enhancing his singer’s effects; Padmore was on top form. It was less the beauty of his sound than its burning intensity, the sense of emotion stripped bare. When he bifurcated into two voices in “Is my team ploughing?”, the character speaking from the grave was a will-o’the-wisp, while the speaker from the land of the living answered with rolling red-bloodedness.
The other performers were the Navarra Quartet, who delivered Ravel’s String Quartet in F with transparent freshness. All in all, two hours in a sound-world of exceptional refinement and purity.
‘….the admirable Navarra String Quartet who realised the innovatively atmospheric quality of the string writing to perfection. They were equally accomplished in Ravel’s String Quartet, achieving a buoyancy and translucence that often evade higher profile ensembles.’
Evening Standard, 28 April
‘Ravel’s sole String Quartet received a remarkably focused performance from the young Navarra players, the sort of playing that really drew you into the music, with wonderfully open, guitar-like pizzicatos in the scherzo and all the elusive transparency of French light and shade you could ask for in the slow movement.’
Reviewed by: Peter Reed www.classicalsource.com
‘Ravel’s Quartet in F was given a buzzingly alive performance by the Navarra String Quartet, precisely tuned, with melodies emerging and receding into the diaphanous textures as if by sleight of hand.’
Guardian, Sunday 1 May 2011
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5-Star review in BBC Music Magazine for Vasks recording!
About our release of the first three string quartets by Peteris Vasks on Challenge Records:
‘…this young UK-based ensemble understands his music down to the microsecond, and plays at a level that can be characterized as exceptional…’ Volkskrant, The Netherlands, September 2010
”The playing is nothing short of sensational, the precision and enormous dynamics absolutely thrilling, as is the clarity of recording.” DD Yorkshirepost.co October 2010
”They play this repertoire with the utmost conviction, and judging by the photo in the book, to the satisfaction of the composer.” Siebe Riedstra Luister november 2010
”We can be very brief about the Navarra Quartet: Amazing!” PS Mania Klassiek October 2010
”The stunning performance compensates a lot. The Navarra has specialized in a finely polished expression. Flawless intonations bring a sonority that causes a sensation in itself. Thiemo Wind Telegraaf 16 oktober 2010
http://www.opusklassiek.nl/cd-recensies/cd-aw/vasks01.htm
Herald Newspaper, September 2010
Mozart Musical Journey, Lammermuir Festival
Festivals are for fun, and for doing “something a bit mad”. So said Hugh Macdonald, director of the new Lammermuir Festival, to the audience gathered in Garvald Church, as they waited serenely in the afternoon sunshine for the start of an epic day-long concert. The mad ones were presumably the Navarra Quartet, who had accepted the challenge of playing three concerts in one day. Without faltering, they took us by the hand, and lead us through six magical works by Mozart, Haydn and Schubert. For Schubert’s String Quintet – just a small parting gift at the end of the night – they were joined for double-cello effect by Edinburgh’s Philip Higham.
Our Mozart Musical Journey was combined with physical progress – three concerts in three different churches in East Lothian. Throughout the day, stories circulated of groups of walkers, or perhaps pilgrims, walking from venue to venue. Local villagers of all ages were seen leaving their pretty houses to hear the music, together with those of us who had meandered through the empty country roads from further afield.
By the end of the night, we had all travelled emotionally too. The effect of this music on its listeners was fresh and audible. The audience sighed with wonder after the Navarra’s First movement of the Haydn G minor Op20/3, (the start of the first concert), in a way that I have never quite heard before, while the wild rendition of the gypsy presto at the end of Haydn D major Op20/4 whipped them up into an excited chattering. The Schubert made a fittingly staggering end.
Having felt a little daunted by the prospect of an entire day of quartet concerts, in fact I found myself luxuriating in so much music, so well played. It was a wonderful indulgence to hear it all in one go, and from the hands of the Navarra. When they really go for it, their combined sound has a deeply satisfying sense of plenty of meat-on-the bone. They can conjure up a demented bluebottle in the last movement of Haydn’s D major, before their light touch sends it out, with absolutely no fuss, through the open window of the final bars.
And what a delight it is to hear Magnus Johnston, returning at last to full-time quartet playing. Whether it is turning a first violin flourish with elegance and ease, flying helter-skelter over the last movement of Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet, creating an exquisite fairy-like Trio in Mozart’s D minor, or a plaintive folk flautando in the E flat major’s Trio, to listen to him is to know you are where you should be.
The Independent
Michael Church
Chamber Prom 2: Piemontesi/Navarra Quartet, Cadogan Hall
(Rated 4/ 5 )
Monday, 26 July 2010
With passport glitches, illness, and death wreaking more havoc than usual in concert schedules, we’re seeing just how big the available pool of talent is.
And while this indicates the challenge musicians now face, it also represents their opportunity: many now-famous singers and instrumentalists owe their careers to the sudden indisposition of a senior rival. This it was that the Navarra String Quartet got their unexpected Proms debut, while the young Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi had just a day in which to find his modus vivendi with them in one of the most demanding works in the chamber repertoire.
To Catherine Bott’s amiable enquiry as to how this speed-dating worked, he replied – slightly out of breath after stunning us with his Debussy – that ‘the human brain can achieve weeks of work in just two hours, if the pressure is intense enough’. And it clearly was: they launched into Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major with such assurance that they might have been collaborating for years. This majestic work was written by Schumann as a miniature piano concerto which his wife Clara could perform without orchestra in private houses: Piemontesi and the Navarras gave it the requisite declamatory spaciousness from the start. As with Schumann’s piano concerto proper, this work involves constant dialogue between soloist and ensemble: with Piemontesi leading the way, they made a thrilling journey through an emotional landscape by turns sweet, spooky, throbbingly combustible, and liberatingly joyous. And if this was a flawless performance, so was the Navarra Quartet’s treatment of one of Haydn’s early masterpieces, the G minor Quartet Opus 20. They have a warmly-rounded and very expressive sound, perfectly suited to Haydn: on this showing, they are already in the first rank of his music’s exponents. Meanwhile Piemontesi – one of the BBC’s New Generation artists – is a brand-leader for Debussy: using a completely different palette from the one he revealed in the Schumann, he gave a series of preludes the most exquisitely translucent characterisation.
BBC Music Magazine (Recording Haydn Seven Last Words, June 2009)
‘…the players realize the music’s essential intensity…with their vivid sense of dramatic expression in an intensely detailed performance.’
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Rheingau Musik Festival, July 2008)
“A rarity, on the other hand, was a performance in the basilica by the Navarra Quartet of Haydn’s string quartet in G op.33 No. 5 and Mozart’s noticeable reference (to it – Haydn’s piece), the quartet No.15 in d KV 421; performed impulsively and dynamically, but also with admirable filigree by the musicians…. the Navarra quartet unfolds the adorable setting in Haydns largo or Mozart’s andante with breathtaking tension into full bloom’.
The Strad (Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, July 2007))
“‘The Navarra Quartet brought some good humoured playing to Haydn’s Op.64 No.6….many magical moments in Thomas Ades Arcadiana….the Mendelssohn was outgoing and it’s Schnittke fearless.
ESTA Magazine, January 2006 (Soviet-Festival Manchester, January 2006)
“The outstanding quartet playing of the whole Fest was giving us by the Navarra Quartet. The group formed at the RNCM in September 2002 with three Dutch members and an English cellist. It was no surprise that they were multi-prize-winners at home and abroad, and had gained the RNCM’s professional performance diploma with distinction. Joined by pianist, Vyacheslav Sidorenko, their Sunday afternoon recital of Shostakovich’s Prelude and Fugue No. 15, Schnittke’s quartet No. 3, Shostakovich’s piano quintet and Shostakovich No. 3 was a truly remarkable experience. Totally at one with the music and each other, these talented young players are on their way to top acclaim in the chamber music world. By comparison the St Petersburg Quartet…though superb, did not play with such all-consuming believe.”
The Strad, January 2007 (Wigmore Hall, September 2006)
“Moments of intuitive chamber work and cellist Nathaniel Boyd’s compelling melodic lines were signs of good things to come…Shostakovich’s marathon third quartet came to life in subtle shades of humour and gravity. The young anglo-dutch ensemble played with an uncanny wisdom….”
The Musical Opinion (Purcell Room, September 2006)
“The Navarra Quartet opened the programme exactly a hundred years after Shostakovich’s birth with the composers eight quartet, a reading of much insight and dedication.”