Audience is spellbound

Concert: A Divine Obsession – Music by Bach and Mendelssohn, Tom McDonald Cellar, Church Road Winery, Taradale 6 June 2008

With its intimate ambience and splendid acoustic qualities, the Tom McDonald Barrel Room is a favourite venue for the internationally acclaimed NZSQ – violinists Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman, Violist Gillian Ansell and Cellist Rolf Gjelsten – and one to which they return regularly. Programming for NZSQ concerts is usually innovative and this series of two concerts is no exception, focusing on the link of the Leipzig master contrapuntalist and Bach’s later champion, Felix Mendelssohn.

In The Art of Fugue Bach developed contrapuntal music to a consummate finality, as he explored the endless possibilities of the development of a theme. Usually heard performed on the keyboard, this arrangement for string quartet, a combination not associated with Bach, sheds new light on the work, with the audience able to hear very clearly detail not always apparent in the keyboard version.

Seven of the fugues were performed, in two brackets, starting with the elegantly played D minor subject and leading to the highly developed final double fugue with its inverted counterpoint and contrapuntal complexity. Each member of the Quartet maintained splendid balance with the other three players, holding the listener spellbound with numerous high points in the performance.

Not only was Mendelssohn a major force in ensuring, almost a hundred years after Bach’s death, the rediscovery and the performance of much of Bach’s music, but he was clearly influenced in his composition. There is much contrapuntal writing in his String Quartets Op 44 No 1 in D and No 3 in E flat, and the single movement Fugue in E flat played in this programme.

There was a delightful teaser to end the concert – the beautifully played Aria from the Goldberg Variations, the major work on the programme for the second concert at 7.30pm this evening.