SCHUBERT'S String Quintet from the Elias Quartet and Laurène Durantel, meaning a double bass instead of the second cello, gave the immortal work a whole new perspective, sonority and dynamic.
You could understand if people didn't like it because it altered the balance of sound, on the other hand, it wasn't unpleasing on the ear, the normal two-cello introduction of first movement's gloriously exquisite second theme being particularly appe
aling.
In the dolorous adagio, the pizzicato figures underpinning Sara Bitlloch's 'weeping' first violin took on greater solemnity, while the instrument added a not inappropriate weight to the rumbustious, peasant-like dance of the scherzo.
Leaving aside the suitability or not of a double bass – Laurène played all the second cello's notes (except two she said), such is her skill – it was a marvellous performance which captured all Schubert's despondent gloom, wistfulness and optimistic, ultimate triumph of life over death.
In the extremely high Upper Chapel pulpit, Naomi Atheron played Messiaen's Interstellar Call for horn solo with admirable steadiness in the work's wide tonal range of colours, but Debussy's Chanson de Bilitis was not the famous 1897 work everyone was expecting.
Debussy penned music for two flutes, two harps and celesta around 1900 to accompany the recitation of 12 more poems of the 143 that make up Pierre Louÿs' Chansons de Bilitis.
The virtually unknown work was heard here in a flute, piano, narrator arrangement.
A sort of musical melodrama, the music more opulent than in the 1897 song cycle, Guy Eshed was as mellifluous as ever, Tim Horton revelled in the piano part and Laurène Durantel delivered the poems in true 'mélodie' idiom, although her microphone needed to be a little closer.
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