Merlin Music Society Review January 2007

Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival by Rian Evans

Monmouth’s Merlin Music Society constitutes a most honourable gathering of stalwarts, but the buzz of the final concert of the Wye Valley Festival on 19 January will surely have given it a great fillip.

An ensemble drawn from some of Britain’s top young chamber music players performed a fairly standard programme with far from standard passion and élan, clearly captivating the virtually capacity audience.

Joint Artistic Director Daniel Tong was joined by his brother Joseph in Mozart delightful C major Piano Sonata K521, which proved the perfect foil for Schumann’s First Piano Trio in which Daniel Tong was joined by Benjamin Navarro and Kate Gould.  The balance of headlong flow with deeply expressive melodic writing was negotiated with real instinct for Schumann’s characteristic heart-on-sleeve utterance yet also captured the intimations of pain that are also unquestionably present.

Mendelssohn’s First string Quartet is less frequently heard than the Octet, which predates it by only a year.  The miracle of the 17-year-old Mendelssohn’s writing never ceases to amaze and hearing it played with such exuberance by these brilliant young musicians was an apt reminder of his extreme youth.  The composer used the same instrumentation as that of Mozart’s Quintets and, in Tom Dunn and Cian O’Duill, this group was fortunate in having two viola players whose tone complemented each other well and ensured a resonant but never overburdening sound at the heart of the ensemble.  With violinists Matthew Truscott, Fiona McNaught and cellist Alice Neary completing the line-up, the wealth of experience that each individual brought from their own burgeoning careers, together with the evident sympathies and commitment built up over the 10-day Festival, made this as rewarding for the listener as it must have been for the players.  There was often a fierce intensity about the music making, but also the simple joy that chamber music engenders.  This was indeed the music of friends.

Rian Evans