Dante one

This year the Dante String quartet are giving the three quartet concerts at Dorking Halls, after an absence of four years, although we have heard them at least once in London. The first of these concerts took place last Saturday and we got Haydn Op.33, No.5; Smetana No.1 and Beethoven Op.59, No.1.

Haydn very good, but we did not really settle to the Smetana, despite the strength of some of the passages. I suppose the transition from the Haydn was too much for us. In style, our first thought was that it would have done better after the Beethoven, although our second thought was that that would not have worked either, for other reasons. In any event, Beethoven very good too, although I was a little confused by the third and fourth movements being run together.

I think we have got used to the Martineau Hall now, after the not altogether satisfactory opening occasion noticed at reference 2. But there was still some air conditioning noise from the ceiling and the demountable seats could make a good clang if you knocked them in the right way - which, I am pleased to say - did not happen during the performance. It also made an interesting change to be sitting above the quartet, rather than below them.

Puzzled on return from the interval by a couple of the contraptions snapped left guarding the top entrance to the hall, the label to which suggested something to do with shop lifting. Why would one need such things at the top entrance, only available at concerts and such like?

At the end we nipped out of the back entrance, despite two of the very young team at the Halls standing across the corridor which led to it. Which meant that we were home in less than a quarter of the time it takes us to get home from the Wigmore Hall.

Once home, I thought to check up on the Beethoven, to find that that third and fourth movements were indeed run together, with a long trill from the first violin bridging the gap. Still and all, I like my signposts so that I know where I am: if I had bothered to read the programme notes carefully, I would have known, but they did not think to mark the list of movements, with a hyphen after the third, which might have helped on a good day. Certainly something we have seen at least once before, although I cannot now trace the occasion.

I was also struck by the way the paper of my Dover edition of the string quartets has aged in the near forty years I have had it. And I had thought that Dover published classy reprints! Paid for by one of the very few fees that I received over the years for public speaking in the course of my duties as a civil servant.

PS: the principal leader, principal because she led for the second and third pieces but not the first, made it to the newspapers a couple of years ago by having her violin stolen while she was locking her bicycle outside Brixton tube station. She got it back after the young lady who had stolen it tried to sell it in the Streatham branch of Cash Converters for £50, a good deal less than what it was worth. An outfit which I shall now be looking out for.

Reference 1: https://dantequartet.org/. The source of the snap of the principal leader, Krysia Osostowicz.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=dante+quartet.

Reference 3: https://www.cashconverters.co.uk.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/11/second-attempt.html. The last time we heard this particular Beethoven. No complaints about running together on this occasion.