Room Music at Blackheath 7 December 2003
Piano Quartets: Mozart in G minor & Hahn in G major

This concert was fairly well attended but I trust other lovers of chamber music were as disappointed as we were? Normally I avoid publishing unhelpful, negative reviews. We arrived too late to study the programme before the concert. The personell of Room Music were not named in advance, so I will save the players' embarrassment and just make some general points.

When the artists came out onto the Recital Room platform, I had been pleased to recognise well known and respected musicians, whom I had admired and enjoyed hearing over the years past. Expectations aroused of a distinguished morning's music making were quickly dashed when they launched into a rough and unready, routine account of Mozart's quartet, one of the strongest of his chamber works in G minor, a key he tended to reserve for weighty matters.

Mozart does not 'play itself' and this was one of the worst professional performances of this masterwork that I have suffered in years. The piano was played loud and unfeelingly, with untidy ornamentation - it did not sound the same instrument upon which Elena Riu had worked such magic a few weeks before. Tuning was poor, balance seemed to have been left to take care of itself, and there was no interpretative vision to descry. Perhaps Sunday morning just didn't suit them?

Reviewing recently a magnificent set of late Mozart symphonies, I confessed to a certain resistance to hearing his most popular works too often: "I had found the Mozart Bicentenary celebrations in 1991, with wall-to-wall Mozart for a whole year, a considerable turn-off, and subsequently have tended to avoid the too-familiar masterpieces, whose freshness had palled for me."

Reynaldo Hahn's quartet was new to many present, and I recommended those I talked with to look out his songs, which nowadays enjoy a greater (and well deserved) popularity than the larger-scale works which have fallen into neglect in this country. The quartet needed far more elegance and finesse to make a good case for itself, and we did not remain for the Dvorak quartet, preferring to keep unsullied memories of other performances and recordings.

That most groups give of their best at Blackheath Sundays, many reviews testify fulsomely (q.v. Arpège last week). With tickets at £12.50, seasoned musicians owe it to patrons who turn out on a winter's Sunday morning, and to themselves, to offer well prepared performances when they choose to programme 'canonic' masterpieces.