The Week's Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 891, 31 August 1956, Page 20

The Week's Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

Mest of us will remember the Robert Masters Quartet from their previous visit here, but their present tour makes one conscious anew of the range of works available to such a group, by ringing the changes between the various combinations of the four instruments. Their versatility has certainly been put to the test these last few weeks. They played, for instance (YC link), the Schumann Piano Quartet, a work .dating from the same period as the Quintet, but very much less. known or played: why, I wonder? There are fewer musical fireworks, admittedly, and perhaps more of an air of hard work about it; but the graceful melodies are there, the force and purpose of development, the incessant movement and the ingenious twists that are part and parcel of a major Schumann piece. Then there was Brahms’s Piano Quartet in A, which takes itself rather more seriously, and invites its performers to do the same. Really, its inescapable, in spite of its bright major key; the Robert Masters Quartet fortunately didn’t struggle against the tide, and there was a solid Germanic satisfaction in the result they attained, not without its soft lyricism when the moment was ripe.

One particular pleasure was their playing of the Beethoven’ Triple Concerto (YC link) with the National Orchestra. Faults were not many-the cello tended to be somewhat over-powered-but a general excellence of soloists and support was the chief matter for comment. Co-ordination of forces rnust be as hard in this Concerto as in any; but the Quartet’s members, under the direction of Sir Bernard Heinze, made light of all the obvious articular difficulties, and at no juncture could one sey the joint was out of time. Alex Lindsay and Janetta McStay (NZBS) played the Mozart Sonata in B Flat, K.378, in as nice a piece of team and solo work as I have heard recently, with a clarity of touch and tone that any artists could be proud of. And as a late postscript, I should mention the Quartet by Walter Piston, played at their last recital by the La Salle Quartet; a modern work but euphonious, with a wealth of internal interest brought clearly to the notice of the ear-too carefully, if anything, but the effort wasn’t wasted. No apology was made for the inclusion of such an unfamiliar piece, for none should be necessary: if such works have reached the repertoire of American groups, then there should be no reason for anyone else to exclude them.