Romsey Chamber Music Festival Finale

The elements were no less a presence in the final concert of this week-long festival and provided the thematic ‘glue’ to an otherwise seemingly unrelated sequence of music.

Proceedings began with a slice of juvenilia by Jean Sibelius written whilst the composer was still a schoolboy. Despite the illustrative charm of this brief duo, neatly outlined by Luke Hsu (violin) and Lydia Hillerudh (cello), this miniature left only a fleeting impression. Meanwhile, the stimulus of seeing the sky above the French Alps inspired Kaija Saariaho’s Cloud Trio, an airy portrait from 2009 intended to inhabit “one coherent texture”, yet with each instrument given an independent function. Unfolding from a stratospheric opening gesture, its shifting moods and transparent textures were beautifully caught by Hsu, Hillerudh and viola player Kyungsik Shin. 

Three Lieder by Brahms, variously nostalgic, fervent and resolute brought together a gratifying partnership between Jaehong Kim (baritone) and Ziteng Fan (piano). The childhood memories of Regenlied were suitably warm-toned, while the ardent declarations within Botschaft surged with passion, Kim similarly powerful when conveying the poet’s assertion in Von ewiger Liebe that love can endure beyond iron and steel. 

Of the evening’s first half, it was left to Robert Peate’s String Quartet to provide the strongest imprint, its creative impulse derived from a series of atmospheric paintings by Charles MacCarthy (b.1950). A work of meticulous craftmanship and accumulating interest, its single movement span, designed to resemble a sonata form structure, was given an ideal first outing by Emma Roijackers, Laura Rickard (violins), Anuschka Cidlinsky (viola) and Rainer Crosett (cello) who collectively outlined its gossamer sonorities and warmly expressive harmonic soundscape that brought distinct echoes of Britten, Tippett and Janáček.

Dating from 1801, Beethoven’s seldom performed only string quintet (pairs of violins and violas and a single cello) is often known as the “Storm” Quintet, a nickname drawn from its turbulent final movement. This account gave every reason why it should be heard more often, with the five players – Hsu, Rickard (violins), Cidlinsky, Shin (violas) and Hillerudh (cello) – teasing out the first movement’s striking contrasts and bringing intimacy to the poetic Adagio, Hsu’s sweet-toned violin a delight. Wit and revelry enlivened the Scherzo, while vivid ‘lightning’ flashes and a nose-thumbing minuet brought this unjustly neglected work to a suitably rousing close.