Brighton Festival. Over three weeks of art, theatre, music, dance, discussion... Marvellous.
Pretty much on a whim, I went with a friend to see the Takàcs Quartet at the Corn Exchange. Because it was just a random impulse, neither of us paid much attention to what the music was going to be, and we couldn't be bothered to buy a programme, so we spent most of the concert 'blind', as it were, with no idea what we were listening to. It was quite an interesting experience. One of the pieces was Bartok's 4th String Quartet, which was written in 1927, but we both thought it was much more modern than that. I hadn't heard the piece before, and I'm not usually a great Bartok fan, but I liked it a lot, especially the slower third movement, which was very atmospheric. The other works were Haydn's last quartet, and Schumann's A minor quartet, so a real mixture of periods. I thought it worked very well as a programme, and they played it all very well - some quartets very much specialise in a particular period, and you can tell when they're out of their comfort zone, but the Takàcs seemed perfectly at home in classical, romantic and modern.
The Corn Exchange was a good venue for a chamber concert. It's quite a big hall, but the acoustic is very good - resonant, but clear, so the sound never got lost. I did think the sound of the viola got slightly lost at times, but I suspect that might just be my bias as a viola player showing.
And afterwards, we went to Terraces, and sat on the terrace looking out over the sea drinking our first Pimms of the summer. What a lovely way to spend a bank holiday Sunday.
Pretty much on a whim, I went with a friend to see the Takàcs Quartet at the Corn Exchange. Because it was just a random impulse, neither of us paid much attention to what the music was going to be, and we couldn't be bothered to buy a programme, so we spent most of the concert 'blind', as it were, with no idea what we were listening to. It was quite an interesting experience. One of the pieces was Bartok's 4th String Quartet, which was written in 1927, but we both thought it was much more modern than that. I hadn't heard the piece before, and I'm not usually a great Bartok fan, but I liked it a lot, especially the slower third movement, which was very atmospheric. The other works were Haydn's last quartet, and Schumann's A minor quartet, so a real mixture of periods. I thought it worked very well as a programme, and they played it all very well - some quartets very much specialise in a particular period, and you can tell when they're out of their comfort zone, but the Takàcs seemed perfectly at home in classical, romantic and modern.
The Corn Exchange was a good venue for a chamber concert. It's quite a big hall, but the acoustic is very good - resonant, but clear, so the sound never got lost. I did think the sound of the viola got slightly lost at times, but I suspect that might just be my bias as a viola player showing.
And afterwards, we went to Terraces, and sat on the terrace looking out over the sea drinking our first Pimms of the summer. What a lovely way to spend a bank holiday Sunday.
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