The association of Lady Hallé and Dr. Brodsky in Bach's Concerto for two
violins yesterday brought together by far the largest audience ever yet
seen at these concerts. The D minor, with two solo parts, is doubtless
the finest on the whole of Bach's violin Concertos. The Largo, cast in a
mould that the composer used more than once, obviously takes the first
place among movements of the kind, in virtue of stately magnificence
paired with a certain royal mildness and amiability of expression. Other
examples may be deeper or more poignant in feeling, but none other is so
richly and perfectly organised in structure or so sweetly benign in
expression. The two solo instruments are treated by the composer on a
footing of absolute equality, and the manner in which his intentions
were yesterday realised by the two masterly performers was above praise.
Why (one is likely to ask on hearing such a performance) did a composer,
who could make a couple of instruments sing so sweetly and graciously
and in a manner so perfectly adapted to their proper genius, very
frequently force the singing voice to follow a crabbed line,
instrumental rather than vocal in character? In the more vivacious
movements preceding and following the Largo nothing could have been
finer than the delicate interplay of the two well-matched solo parts,
and the whole composition lost little or nothing by the rendering of the
accompaniment on a pianoforte instead of the small orchestra for which
it was originally scored. As pianoforte accompanist Miss Olga Neruda
showed unfailing discretion, and so contributed not a little to the
exquisite impression produced by the whole work.
[Sidenote: =Beethoven
B Flat Major Quartet.=]
In Beethoven's B flat major Quartet--the last of the third volume--the
intricate lines of the composition were brought out with admirable
unanimity of purpose, perfection of _ensemble_ never once being lost
amid the utmost fire and freedom of the execution in the rapid parts.
The Quartet, which occupies quite forty-five minutes in performance, is
remarkable for an opening movement in which adagio and allegro sections
alternate with wayward frequency, for the curious fourth movement in a
sort of Ländler rhythm, and for the Cavatina in E flat preceding the
Finale. It is capricious and multifarious, but has neither the
abstruseness nor the occasional violence of the later Beethoven as
revealed in the last Quartets and Sonatas.
[Sidenote: =Tchaïkovsky
Quartet in D Major.=]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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