Edinburgh Arts: Rose Street Ensemble's Mozart birthday concert

Rose Street Ensemble's Mozart birthday concert

This was a mixed programme, the first half of which opened with a slightly patchy rendition of the Dissonance quartet: superb playing from the second violin in particular, while the first had moments of dubious intonation. The scaled-down piano concerto which followed, no. 8 in C (K. 246), was rather better, though it was a pity the solo part (beautifully played by John Kitchen on a reconstruction of a period fortepiano) concentrated so much on the upper octaves, leaving a wonderfully rich tenor register largely untouched.

We could barely have asked for a better second half: the Serenade for 13 wind instruments. True, there was a handful of fluffed notes, but Mozart's inspiration overcame all these - even the unkind remark in the programme notes about double-bass pizzicatos in one of the trios being "a delightful touch lost when the work is played with contra-bassoon", which I read moments before the players came on stage. A contra-bassoonist among them.

There can be no better way to close this review than in the words of Salieri (or, more accurately, in Peter Shaffer's depiction of him in his play Amadeus), describing the slow movement from this same serenade.

"On the page, it looked nothing. The beginning was simple, almost comic: just a pulse - bassoon, basset horns, like a rusty squeeze-box. And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe - a single note, hanging there, unwavering, until a clarinet took it over, sweetened it into a phrase of such delight, [...] filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing - it seemed to me I was hearing the voice of God."

(27th January 2006)

Comments:

It seems that I've been a little more reserved in my critism of the quartet; preferring to give them the benefit of the doubt. I've also hidden away my review in my comments section.

Robert Dick on second violin, is as you said, a marvelous musician. As I think I mentioned to you last night, he's led a few orchestras in some great festival performanced in OSP in the past. Perhaps he would have been a better choice for the demanding first fiddle part?

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