Naresh Sohal 70th Birthday Dante String Quartet Wigmore Hall 17 July 2010 He has written extensively for orchestra and chamber ensembles, but his music has not made a big impact on Britain's mainstream concert life, and I do not remember having encountered it previously. Sohal is two-thirds way through composing a set of six quartets, in the 18th C mode*, in honour of the survivability of the string quartet into the 21st C... No 3, a short single movement, was attractive, its introduction with quarter-tone glides acting as a sort of ritornello. Nothing very exotic in the "extension and figure development"; but nice to have modern music in which it is easy to follow the thinking. A well prepared account of the Debussy quartet followed, but most of us would have preferred another of Sohal's instead on this special occasion.** Sally Silver impressed in a group of Sohal's Tagore songs (2004) in the original Bengali, with discreet tabla accompaniment to give a more Eastern flavour. Wigmore Hall was so darkened (for "atmosphere"?) that we could not attempt to follow the English version, printed very small in the programme... Peter Grahame Woolf * ** Chiaroscuro 2 (1978, Arditti Quartet) is Sohal's String Quartet no 1, and is included in a Naresh Sohal Portrait CD
|