It would have been difficult for the Tokyo String Quartet to find a more unlikely way to say goodbye to its friends in Toronto than with the plangent dying away of Béla Bartók’s Quartet No. 6.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Yes, the final season concert for Music Toronto after being regular guests in this city for most of its 44-year history must have been more bitter than sweet for this foursome. But was so much to celebrate, not the least of which being a commitment to performing the most serious of classical music to the highest of standards.
Violinists Bartin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda, violist Kazuhide Isomura and cellist Clive Greensmith leavened the concluding programme in a full cycle of Bartók String Quartets with a piece by the father of the string quartet, Joseph Haydn.
But more so than in the previous concerts, the Tokyans let the intensity of the bookend Bartók Quartets — on Thursday night at the Jane Mallett Theatre we heard Nos. 3 and 6 — bleed into the Haydn work, the late Op. 77 No. 1 Quartet.
The Hungarian composer sets up tension in the opening notes of both works and never relieves it. Instead, he shifts its shape and direction and intensity.
The final quartet, written as his mother was dying and the inevitability of World War II turned into reality towards the end of the summer of 1939, does a mesmerising dance with death in its two middle movements before that slow dying out.
Quartet No. 3, a compact affair, writhes and frowns with the composer’s signature rhythmic invention from its first note to the last.
Primed for — and from — this tension, the Tokyo took Haydn’s music in a similar vein, filling it with supersaturated colour and heightened dynamics. There were times the music sounded more like Beethoven’s than Haydn’s, and it was utterly absorbing.
There are many fine quartets — veterans as well as newcomers — in the world. But ensembles like the Tokyo, so utterly committed to the music and possessed of unflagging technique and unerring good taste, are rare.
They will be missed.
There is one last opportunity to hear the Tokyo String Quartet in Toronto, on Friday night (April 5) at the Church of the Holy Trinity, right behind the Eaton Centre. It’s a benefit concert for longtime host, Music Toronto.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
