Kreutzer Quartet at Wilton's Music Hall

WINTER JOURNEY - Composer Portrait - David Matthews

Matthews - Two Quartets, Winter Journey for solo violin, Schumann, Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai arr. for string quartet
Beethoven - Grosse Fuge

Kreutzer Quartet: Peter Sheppard Skærved, Mihailo Trandafilovski, Morgan Goff & Neil Heyde

Wednesday 30th January at 7.30pm [In association with Toccata Classics]

Last night's auspicious concert at Wilton's, featuring string quartets of David Matthews, launched a series of appearances there by the Kreutzer Quartet, which is currently reaching great heights in their performances of contemporary music with their line-up of expert string players, each very individual but who have 'gelled' into one of the finest ensembles specialising in non-standard repertoire before the public.

Importantly, in this series the Kreutzers are supporting Wilton's towards their building appeal for £3.5 million to save one of the world's oldest surviving grand music halls, one of the neediest and worthwhile such causes in the country (Grade II*).

Superficially in advanced dilapidation, I am assured that Wilton's is structurally sound, with a magnificent interior, its gallery supported by original barley-sugar columns. Wilton's has for us provided a memorable venue for many unforgettable evenings of concert and theatre in recent years, notably by Broomhill Opera when they were the company in residence, e g:

http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/liveevents/ibalilootsotsi_and_mysteries.html
http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/Britten_Turn.htm

The present regime (director Frances Mayhew) has used every penny-pinching ingenuity to make it the most welcoming and comfortable theatre in London (equalled perhaps only by RADA's well endowed base, where we are regular patrons). New to Wilton's one of the Kreutzer musicians opined after the David Matthews concert that for him it has become his "favourite venue world-wide" for playing chamber music !

The acoustic is quite remarkable, especially hearing a quartet there the day after a recital by a world-class rated string quartet* at Wigmore Hall. Two of Matthews' quartets were the central items in a hugely enjoyable concert, introduced in informal discussion with the composer by Peter Sheppard Skærved [pictured rehearsing Winter Journey].

Matthews' chamber music is both readily accessible and strikingly individual, with surprises along the way in each movement. He has a long fruitful relationship with Schumann's music, which has generated some of his most important works, and it is good new that this concert was something of an introduction to a complete recording of Matthews' seven string quartets.

On this hearing, they clearly merit their return into the limelight.

The Kreutzers have Beethoven's Grosse Fuge Op. 133 firmly in their repertoire (in January 2007 I wrote of their concert at Conway Hall "for really modern sounding music we had a forthright account of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue") and on the present occasion Peter Sheppard explained its presence in this programme historically; Joachim had refused to play it throught his life because he thought it utterly mad, and only fairly recently has it finally become accepted in the canon as an alternative finale for Op 130.
For the Kreutzers it stands alone as one of the most satisfying and exhilarating possible finishers for a contemporary music concert.

Try to get to Wilton's on 26th February for "four radically inventive East Europeans" (one of them the Kreutzers' second violinist) and, from an earlier generation, a quartet of Rejcha, who is also featured in Toccata Classics Kreutzer Quartet recording schedule.

Peter Grahame Woolf

* See reviews of Zehetmair Quartet 2000/2008

Photos: Frances Mayhew