Coull Quartet, Coffee Concert Celebrating 50 Years, Warwick Unitarian Chapel, Sunday 26 May, 2024.

What an amazing impact one Radio 3 ‘plug’ for this event on Sunday morning had on attendance!! The Unitarian Chapel was overwhelmed, organisers searching for and finding extra chairs in a number of nooks and crannies seldom explored. Rumour has it that last minute arrivals were, sadly, turned away!

This second of three concerts to celebrate the 50 years since violinists Roger Coull and Philip Gallaway met at the Royal Academy of Music in 1974 hosted an extra celebration as the day was Roger’s birthday. With commanding playing by Jonathan Barritt (viola) and Nicholas Roberts (cello), the quartet embraced works by Schubert, Kodály and Beethoven.

Schubert’s Quartettsatz is the first movement of what is listed as String Quartet No 12 in C D703 of 1820. This allegro assai was Schubert’s first attempt for four years to compose a quartet.

Described by The Strad as the “the magnificent seasoned quartet” the Coull lived up to that reputation with a demonstration of intricate pizzicato playing by Roberts and strong leadership by both Coull and Barritt.

Many middle European composers of the mid 19th century sought folk themes and melodies to help develop the love of the countryside for their compositions; none more so than Dvořák, Bartok and Kodály. Galloway’s scene-setting story about Kodály and Bartok wandering the hills of Galánta, 50 miles east of Bratislava the Slovak capital, armed with an Edison wax cylinder recording machine capturing the folk-tunes was a very cheering moment on a Sunday morning! Imagine the fun the good friends had.  Full of cross-rhythms of interwoven melodies, this work is considered  a complex important modern piece of Hungarian chamber music.  Roger’s solo in the second movement, strong pizzicato playing and long cello strokes aided the exploration of those carefully recorded folk themes.

Beethoven’s Opus 18 series of six quartets show a complete mastery of the classical string quartet developed by Haydn and Mozart. In spite of rising temperatures in the Unitarian Chapel there was no loss of quartet energy as they tackled quartet No 1 with an adagio full of emotion, a lively scherzo and a familiar Beethoven vibrant final allegro.  Book early for their third coffee concert on 30 June, please!