They don't forget; nor will you

cliveoconnell

Sep 28

VISION STRING QUARTET

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank

Tuesday September 26, 2023

(L to R) Daniel Stoll, Florian Willeitner, Sander Stuart, Leonard Disselhorst

These latest guests for Musica Viva were here on the fourth leg of their national tour after performing in Newcastle, Melbourne and Hobart, from which last they were lucky to escape after sharing the national problem of flight delays/cancellations. Anyway, they got here with a couple of hours to spare and the experience didn't seem to do them any harm, if you judge the situation by their extraordinary exhibition on Tuesday evening.

The big feature about the Visions is that they play from memory; not all the time, apparently, but all the way on this, their first Australian appearance. It seems that the German ensemble is presenting one program only as they move through all the state and territory capitals except Darwin. They begin with a brief Bloch Prelude, subtitled Receuillement in the best Baudelairean tradition: a five-minute effusion of mild passion. They end with Dvorak No 13 in G Major which celebrates - at length - being back home in Bohemia's woods and fields after the composer's mixed American experiences.

But what astounds is their reading from memory of Bartok No. 4, allegedly in C minor. This is a tour de force, not only of the obvious - learning the complex by heart - but also in the energetic certainty of the group's interpretation. Here, what you are invited into is a radically new way of listening where the performers don't focus on the printed notes but have internalized them so that their linear relationships aren't just cerebral but totally physical. No screening from music stands or occasional eye-flicks: these four musicians focus on their collegiality where each knows exactly where and what his contribution is.

The result is that this searing music gains immeasurably, being presented as an unmediated entity and appearing (even though this cannot possibly be true) like a colossal exercise in shared improvisation. Of course, it isn't: Bartok's score is a solid object and the Visions work through it like so many quartets have done since March 1929. The difference is that these players have internalized every scrap and prepared it so thoroughly that you feel unshakeable confidence in their work. In the opening Allegro, the shared demi-semiquaver shakes that start at bar 58 have never sounded as uniform; each canonic pattern took on a cutting edge, e.g. the non-fugato from bar 104. Then there was that breath-taking escalation of tension that breaks out at the bar 126 Piu mosso where the action is too swift to imbibe.

Speaking of which, the Lyric Suite-indebted Prestissimo showed the benefits of knowing your place in an organism because it's in your brain, rather than using the score as an aide-memoire. Here again, the interdependence proved absolute and justified, the ensemble grouping closely around the fulcrum of cellist Leonard Disselhorst as the motivic wisps swelled and faded before that startling burst of glissandi at bar 136, almost the dead-centre of this movement.

Disselhorst set the running for the work's centre with a highly expressive account of the exposed solo from bar 6 to bar 34, first violin Florian Willeitner then taking over for the tinnitus-like portion of this night-music lento. What struck me here was the apparent freedom available to both players, pitching and weaving their lines with the assurance that their partners knew what they were up to and how they were working through their responsibilities before the meat of these pages emerged in bar 50's poco allargando. As for the following all-pizzicato Allegro, we were treated to that rarity: exemplary dynamic gradations and contrasts, as in the abrupt forte arpeggiations of bar 63 preceding the triple-piano susurrus of bar 65 and the consequent catch-and-release processes in play up to bar 88's Un poco piu mosso.

But there were so many other facets to this interpretation that deserve praise. The various pairings came over as razor-sharp in their clarity, rather than slightly sharp-discrepant, as witnessed by the outline of the final Allegretto's main theme (beginning at bar 15) by Willeitner and fellow violinist Daniel Stoll. Later, your spirits were elevated by the determination of Bartok's frequent fierce canons, like that between the violins against Disselhorst and viola Sander Stuart beginning at bars 249/50, then 284/5. And I can't recall being as struck at percussive simultaneity as in the col legno-punctuated stretch beginning at bar 329: a gripping uniformity of attack lasting till bar 340.

After interval, the Visions worked through the Dvorak work with just the same sweeping stamina, perfectly comfortable with the composer's sonorous landscape of benevolent contentment. I watched this from the back of the Conservatorium hall which gave an opportunity to relish the group's timbral warmth, particularly welcome during the Adagio second movement's progress from that throbbing sul G/sul D initial strophe from Willeitner to the weltering grandioso C Major statement just before the key signature reversion back to E flat Major. In these hands, even that self-indulgently lengthy Allegro con fuoco finale maintained its grip as the group seemed to knot even tighter together while the episodes swept past, including that odd prefiguration of Harry Belafonte at the piu mosso 19 bars after Number 5 in the Eulenberg edition of (about) 1910.

You can argue that this group has numerous advantages not available to others. Three of them have been in the Vision configuration since 2012 - long enough to know each other's musicianship and still tolerant enough to endure those personality quirks that have driven asunder other ensembles. Willeitner replaced Jakob Encke in 2021 but his slightly-less-than-two-years Vision experience clearly doesn't tell against him. These musicians still have the heightened perceptions of youth on their side, all being in their very early 30s and I'd suggest at their prime level of physical reactiveness: they move remarkably quickly and with admirable discipline.

Best of all, as their Bartok reading shows, they have no fears of the difficult but show willing to master music that is still taxing after nearly a century since its publication. This readiness to enter fully into their work gives you hope for their future, although it's probably expecting too much to expect that they will eventually be able to give a complete Bartok cycle from memory, for example. Despite that, I'm afraid that the Visions have spoiled us; from now on, I'll be remembering their confidence and ensemble virtuosity when faced with any normal string quartet complete with music stands, no matter how essential these may be. Irrational, I know, but this group has set a remarkable precedent, regardless of what follows from them or anybody else.