Music at Paxton, Paxton House 19/7/25
Written By Kate Calder
Consone Quartet: Agata Daraškaitė violin, Magdalena Loth-Hill violin, Elitsa Bogdanova viola, George Ross, cello, with Philip Higham, cello.
The weather is fine, despite a soggy forecast, and there’s a full house in the Picture Gallery for the Consone Quartet’s farewell to Paxton. As Associate Artists for this season and the previous two, they have performed vivid and imaginative programmes ranging through the established period instrument repertoire to the avant garde in last year’s collaboration with British composer, Gavin Byers. Earlier today they played a piece by Purcell and a new composition by Oliver Leith born in 1990. Last year’s concert, with mezzo Helen Charlston, of songs by the Schumanns and the Mendelssohns in arrangements for voice and string quartet is very high in my list of favourite chamber concerts. Appropriately this afternoon they have another collaboration, this time with Philip Higham, principal cellist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Schubert’s only string quintet.
First, they play Mozart’s String Quartet in A K464 ‘The Drum’. This is one of six quartets which Mozart wrote after meeting Haydn and hearing some of his chamber music. He dedicated the six quartets to Haydn, writing, “I send my six sons to you. They are indeed the fruit of long and laborious study.” The youthful, melodic and ever-changing music is ideally suited to the Consone Quartet. The swift-moving first movement contrasts short phrases passed around the players with unison passages, the gut-stringed instruments sounding brisk in the former and sonorous in the tutti sections. Leader Agata Daraškaitė introduces the slithering triplet motif of the second theme, a delightfully off-beat addition to the mix of sounds which makes up this movement. Later she has more intricate passages above the stave under which the other players echo her phrases. The sedate minuet features unison passages, punctuated by pauses, while in the more lyrical trio, the first violin enjoys another high-flying flight of fancy. The third movement andante is a theme with variations. It begins with a chorale-like theme in which first the two violins duet followed by the viola and cello. In the early variations, the first violin plays a complicated section over the others, but as the variations proceed the other players all have significant solos, with the cello’s main contribution being in the sixth and final variation in which his ‘rata-tat-tat’ beat underpins the other players. It continues like a distant echo through the last quiet bars of the work.The sun is still shining on the courtyard for the now traditional interval drinks, an efficient process which also contributes funds to Music at Paxton. This year the drinks on offer include non-alcoholic beer, which meets with my partner’s approval . . .
Please click here to read this review in full on theEdinburgh Music Review website.
