Brighton Unitarian Church

Sunday 9 August 2015

The final concert brought an unexpected mix of pieces, opening with Barry Mills’ String Quartet written in 2007. The composer introduced the work but it was difficult to sense all the nuances his comments anticipated. The opening movement is based on the sea, but there is no hint here of Debussy or Britten. In fact I doubt if any listener would recognise the sounds as sea-like unless they had been warned in advance. The movement is melancholic and dark, giving way to an edgy, strident second movement which seems too introspective to be playful. The third movement is by far the most successful with a sense of cohesion and refinement, the melodic line passing smoothly between the members of the quartet. The final movement returns to musical ideas drawn from the first two movements and adds birdsong, the most obvious of which was the aggressive call of the gulls.

Gordon Jacob’s Suite for Bassoon and String Quartet is a brief but pleasing work, and brought Brighton Phil’s first bassoon, Jonathan Price, to us for first time. His sound was almost too much for the small venue but well balanced with the quartet across the four short movements. The second and final movements are playful, almost skittish at times, and there is an effective yearning quality to the Elegy. The work was written for the Cheltenham Festival in 1968 and was presumably given alongside other works featuring the bassoon. On this occasion we felt rather cheated at getting so little of the soloist.

The final work was Haydn’s G minor Quarte The Rider. A late work, this has all the passion and depth of a Beethoven quartet and much of the same intensity. The opening textures are dense and the focus moves freely across all four players. The romantic second movement is an absolute delight leading into the mellifluous Menuetto and the genial finale. The soloists from the BPO have changed over the four afternoons and on this occasion were Ani Batikian and Leo Payne, violin, Roland Roberts, viola and Peter Adams, cello. That the orchestra can provide such high standards for chamber concerts is a tribute to its continuing success.

The autumn season opens at Brighton Dome on Sunday 11 October with works by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Kalinnikov.