Leamington Music, Jubilee Quartet, Royal Pump Room, Friday 8 November, 2024.

Leamington Music welcomed the return to the concert stage of the remarkable Tereza Privratska to lead the Jubilee Quartet at the Royal Pump Room last Friday with a programme of Haydn, Webern and Smetana. Now a very proud mother, she led her reconstituted quartet with  exciting vigour and determined direction. Joining her was a Canadian-born violist, Tetsuumi Nagata – a face many in the audience recognised from his previous visit with the Piatti Quartet. Another Canadian, Julia Loucks, is the long serving violist,  joined by the most versatile, Joe Zeitlin, a cellist and specialist in producing and recording bespoke music!

Haydn’s String Quartets Op. 20 ‘Sun Quartets’ are considered a milestone in the history of composition from which he became recognised as the “father of the string quartet”; the label ‘Sun Quartets’ the result of the publisher portraying the sun on the title page! A sparkling opening with Tereza’s confident connected bow strokes, was further eploited in the menuetto with its strongly accentuated four bar phrase. The exemplar of slow movements follows, described as ‘tender and sustained’. These delightful few minutes  deserved the long pause before Jubilee embarked on a finale full of syncopated rhythms which emphathise the offbeats, seemingly enjoyed by all four players.

To suggest, as some critics do, that Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde could be reduced to eleven minutes is an outrage! Webern’s Langsamer Satz composed in 1905 at the age of 21 is sometimes given this unfortunate tag.  Although not performed until 1962, this, his longest piece and, now, popular work were given a strikingly succinct and fresh performance with Tereza’s Joseph Schneider violin playing outstanding.

Bedřich Smetana suffered from several illnesses in his sixty years; by the age of fifty his health had deteriorated under the onslaught of advancing syphilis. Nevertheless, despite being deaf, as the “father of Czech music”, he continued to compose, delivering his Quartet No. 1 in E minor ‘From My Life’ in 1876. Tetsummi Nagata’s viola built a strong opening, maintaining extraordinary precision in the polka of the second movement. His largo contribution was plaintive, yet extremely lyrical; the finale a joyful celebration of Smetana’s career.