29 September 2008

ELIAS STRING QUARTET

Sara Bitloch, Donald Grant violins, Martin Saving viola, Marie Bitloch cello

Among the several fast-rising younger British quartets, the Elias are proving one of the most exciting and distinctive. Formerly called the Johnston String Quartet, they had the accolade in 2005 of being appointed as The Lindsays’ successors as resident quartet for the highly prestigious Music in the Round concert series in Sheffield, where they are also part of a larger chamber group called Ensemble 360. . An equal coup for them was having been twice chosen as resident quartet at the Britten-Pears School at Snape.

They have performed extensively in the UK, and in France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Italy, and the USA, in venues such as the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Bridgewater Hall, Fairfield Halls, Stockholm Concert Hall, and the Auditorium du Louvre. They are currently ensemble in residence at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and have broadcast live on National Radio in the UK, France and Sweden.

Programme

Schubert:  Quartet movement in C minor

Britten:   Quartet No 3

James MacMillan: Memento

Mendelssohn:  Quartet in D Op 44 No 1

The Schubert is one of the composer’s most delectable short pieces and is always an audience favourite.

Britten’s third quartet is his last work and as Michael Kennedy has written “the simplicity and tranquillity of much of the music represent the essence of Britten’s musical achievement over....50 years......Here he achieved the clarity and succinctness and recaptured the imaginative poetry. It is no exaggeration to compare the place of this composition in his life’s work with that of the late quartets of in Beethoven’s.”  The last movement is subtitled La Serenissima and evokes Venice which Britten visited shortly before he died and of course is the setting of his last opera Death in Venice, with which this quartet has several resonances. Kennedy says of this movement: “...the listener can scarcely doubt that he his hearing the greatest of all Britten’s works and one of the greatest string quartets of a century which has produced many masterpieces of the genre......Nothing here is for tears, only for thankfulness that from such springs could flow Britten’s most profound musical thinking, his most delicate sonorities, and his most emotional appeal, a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul.”

James MacMillan’s very short Memento  was, as the composer says,  “written in memory of a friend.... The music is slow, delicate and tentative and is based on the modality of Gaelic lament music and the Gaelic heterophony of psalm-singing in the Hebrides.” 

The Mendelssohn is a delight, full of gusto and high spirits here, charm and delicacy there, and altogether a ravishing ending to what will be a superb opening concert for the new season.

Reviews

“Now led by the charismatic and virtuosic Sara Bitloch, with her sister Marie as the superb cellist, this ensemble set a standard in the Schumann and in a poetic interpretation of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet...which even the more experienced Endellion were hard pressed to surpass two nights later.”  Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph, 2005

 “…the informally clad Elias String Quartet performed a wonderful programme, full of variety, excitement and passion.  As at all performances by any group of Ensemble 360 world-class players, we immediately found that we weren’t listening to music being played; we were listening to music being lived.  Not a note lacks passion and sensitivity, and the unified blend of the players’ sounds is so glorious it sometimes makes you want to leap for joy and burst into tears all at the same time.” Doncaster Free Press, 2007

“As usual with Ensemble 360, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven… Don’t miss them next time…”
Doncaster Free Press, 2007

" . . . the Elias Quartet, whose elegant and immaculate performance . . ." Yorkshire Post, 2006

"The opening was energetic not frenetic, the menuetto had wit and humour and the presto finale breathless accuracy, but they are four virtuoso musicians, as we have found out." Sheffield Telegraph, 2006

"The Elias are already capable of eliciting [an] intense emotional response to music, undoubtedly prompted by Sara Bitlloch's invariably deeply-felt first violin playing"  Sheffield Telegraph, 2007