It is nearly ten years since the Piatti Quartet were prize winners at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, and they are now long established internationally. They are currently Resident Quartet at Kings Place, London, and play a wide range of repertoire with many previously neglected works and new commissions. But here they offered Romantic – and romantic – music, certainly a programme suitable for the eve of St Valentine’s day, and entitled “The Pursuit of Love”.
Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet (1871) and Borodin’s Second String Quartet (1881) have both had an afterlife. Tchaikovsky’s famous Andante cantabile was played on its own and much arranged almost from the start, and Tchaikovsky himself several times conducted his own string orchestra arrangement of it. Borodin’s work supplied song tunes for the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet. But here both works sounded splendid together in the context where they began and still belong – played live by four string players.
The rhapsodic feeling and long lyrical line that opens Borodin’s quartet announced the mood of the concert, cellist Jessie Anne Richardson drawing secure sweet tone high in the instrument. Unusually, the Scherzo comes second but did not interrupt the flow of melody for long. Its subordinate theme was one used in Kismet but fortunately no-one offered a sotto voce mumbling of "Baubles, Bangles and Beads". The exquisite Nocturne was similarly honoured both by Broadway (“And this is my beloved”) and by wonderful playing, which soon banished the simple song arrangement because Borodin’s enchanting extensions of his melody were made for string playing, and hand-overs between players, of such skill and feeing. Leader Michael Trainor had a superb evening, his marvellous tone, dead-centre intonation and lyrical phrasing, all perfect for this music. Like his colleagues, he could not always suppress the smile provoked by the music.
Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet came ten years earlier, and was an early success for the still young composer. Its Moderato e semplice first movement was given a flowing, natural performance right from its gently pulsating opening, accommodating within that flow its fine second subject (so many memorable tunes across just two quartets!) The Andante cantabile second movement was played with the devotion its fame deserves. Small wonder that it reduced Tolstoy to tears at a concert in his honour. The composer, sitting next to the writer, thought it the highest honour his music could receive. The Scherzo’s boisterous rhythm was played with the lift and snap it needs and the Finale’s Allegro vivace dancing quality anticipated the later ballet composer.
One hour of the most attractive and approachable music, no interval, carriages at eight. Time to dine, or for the young – or young at heart – ‘in pursuit of love’, time for a tryst. The only mystery about this very fine Piatti String Quartet concert was the absence of an audience, the gallery unopened, the small stalls of Hall One half full. These two Russian composers, and four excellent string players, deserved better.
