The last round of the Banff International String Quartet Competition before the nine competitors are trimmed to three finalists was today. And it took pretty much all of today to play it.
Each contestant had to play 1) the first movement only of one of the big & great Beethoven or Schubert quartets: in practice, it was one of Beethoven's three Op. 59 quartets commissioned by Count Razumovsky, or one of Schubert's three last quartets; 2) a modern 20th century quartet selected from a curated list.
Magenta gave the First Razumovsky a strong and dedicated reading, while Viatores rendered it more crabbed and contrapuntal. Hana did the only Second Razumovsky, making it brisk and compact. Poiesis made the Third Razumovsky, like Magenta's First, big and dramatic, while Elmire's was more relaxed and expansive. For the Schuberts, Cong played the Rosamunde slowly and as gently as the music would permit. (Disaster struck when the violist broke a string just before the second theme. They stopped, left the stage, came back five minutes later and started over, even more slowly than before.) Kairi in Death and the Maiden were good but a little dry. Arete's G Major was frustrating: quiet parts were so slow and soulful as to lose the thread, while the dramatic parts were so frantic as to lose the thread in the other direction. Nerida also played the G Major, and they got the balance right, as well as equipping the piece with effective fluttering sounds for tremolos.
For the modern round, 3 of the 9 competitors chose a Bartók quartet. (My first time, it was 8 of 10.) Of these, the best was Poiesis's Fifth. It was wild and woolly and quite daring, fit to occupy a minor place among the great Banff Bartók performances of the past. Or at least what I heard of it was: a large part was ripped out of my livestream by an internet connection failure, and the recording isn't yet up on the website as I write. Elmire in the Second was interesting, finding an amazing amount of melodic grace in it but not neglecting that it's not all like that. And Hana's Third was just a typical Bartók performance, impressive but not exciting or ingratiating.
Two quartets picked another Banff modern favorite, Janáček's First. Kairi was determined to make it as lyrical as possible, even dampening out the dissonant squawks that litter parts of the piece. As with Nerida in Schubert, somebody else got the balance right: this time it was Cong, who were even lusher in places, but that only made for the better contrast between the elements.
The other four picked singletons. Of these, by far the best - to my considerable surprise, both because this group has been iffy and normally I detest this piece - was the Magenta in Ligeti's First. They found coherence in this random collection of ticks, and they made it fun to listen to. Nerida in Britten's First was impressive in this odd experimental composition, ranging from spooky to exciting. Hindemith's Fifth is the only one I'd never heard before, a cross between his early modernist and mid-period academic music which the Viatores seemed to handle pretty well. The disappointment was the Arete in Berg's Lyric Suite. I know this piece can be attractive, but their version was just cold and alienating atonality with no redeeming features.
The three finalists will probably be announced about an hour from now. Toting up my evaluations, I'd vote for Nerida and Poiesis, with probably Elmire or perhaps Magenta for a third. Based on past experience, maybe one of those will actually make it. The judges' criteria are different from mine.
ETA: The finalists are Arete, Kairi, and Poiesis. I'll have more to say about those choices in Sunday's post.
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