The naked ear: Arditti Quartet and Paul Cannon at the WIgmore Hall
Arditti Quartet and Paul Cannon
Wigmore Hall
Stalls C15, £5 (under-35s)
26 November 2018
Wigmore page
Programme
Dan Yuhas, Quartet
Mark Barden, Viscera trio
James Clarke, String Quartet no.4
Ferneyhough, String Quartet no.3; Christus Resurgens quintet
While primarily enjoying this evening with the Arditti I did nonetheless have the feeling of – not necessarily of the emperor’s new clothes, but perhaps a suspicion that my untrained eye wasn’t quick enough to see the finery. This superbly played and entertaining programme came in on the whole over my head, leaving me, while yet again full of admiration for the Arditti, often impressed by the music but rarely swept up in it.
Of the three non-Ferneyhoughs in the programme Yuhas’s Quartet is probably the most accomplished but perhaps also the least interesting. It has many nice moments, particularly in the finale, and moves through the contrasting colours and voices of a traditional quartet in a most studious fashion. And yet I found my interest drifting, despite supremely controlled playing from the Arditti; with neither the blistering extended technique of the rest of the programme, nor the decisive rhythmic structure that usually gets me going, the Yuhas is the pleasant but quiet type.
I know neither Barden nor Clarke and failed to do any homework; from the short exposures of these two pieces I’d say they each do a lot of good things but would benefit from employing the contrast and variation that Yuhas so conscientiously assays. Barden’s Viscera, a trio for viola, cello and double bass, is a thrilling whirlwind of sawed bellies and slapped fingerboards – but about three quarters of the way through I felt a little like I was sitting on a train crossing the Nevada desert, the landscape fantastic but samey.
Though less extreme the Clarke moved me similarly, such that I was surprised it is his fourth quartet. The sounds made are extraordinary – so extraordinary that it feels implausible they could be written down, let alone interpreted. There’s greater variety in timbre than in the Barden but this very extraordinariness feels unmoored from a discernible structure, or at least from a structure I could discern. On it went, often quite charmingly. I knew these must be the right notes because it was the Arditti, rather than because of a clear rightness in the music.
The two Ferneyhoughs operate on a higher plane. I’m a little less sure of Christus Resurgens, so dominated by the double bass, but the Third Quartet has an astonishing character, at once wild and austere. I would at times it were a little less austere; seemingly constrained by its own inner logic it never flies off with my imagination as I wish it would. Still, you couldn’t ask for better interpreters than the Arditti: not only the right notes at the right time but a rhetoric of performance that so few quartets attain.
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