Quatuor Arthur-Leblanc rocks
Toronto Star
Nov 14, 2007
John Terauds
Classical Music Critic
Four young New Brunswickers are treated like rock stars when they tour China and Japan, but barely register a ripple among chamber-music diehards in Toronto.
But we should heed the Asians. Quatuor Arthur-Leblanc, which played at the Jane Mallett Theatre for Music Toronto last night, presents the best kind of classical music – thoughtful as well as emotionally engaged.
There are no theatrics here, either in stage behaviour or in inflated contrasts and dynamics. Rather, this quartet shapes every part and every phrase into a cohesive, compelling whole.
As one of two ensembles-in-residence for Music Toronto this season, you should make a point of catching their next Toronto performance, on March 25.
Last night's program registered high in natural intensity, containing Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 4 as well as Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, better known as "Death and the Maiden." It started with the Vivace from André Prévost's String Quartet No. 1.
One of the unifying elements was the rock-solid musical and technical core needed to carry off this difficult music. This is something violinists Hibiki Kobayashi and Brett Molzan, violist Jean-Luc Plourde and cellist Ryan Molzan have in abundance.
They presented the difficulties with smoothed edges and elegant phrasings. It was the soapstone equivalent of rock-solid – and all the more beautiful for it.
The group has been working hard recently on Shostakovich's Quartets, and this was probably the most subtle interpretation possible of his characteristic passages from tension to release. A few times, the music was almost too pretty to have come from the pen of that fraught Soviet-era composer.
The quartet gets its name from a great Acadian violinist and composer, Arthur Leblanc, who died in 1985. In a funny twist of fate, the quartet laded a residency at the University of Laval in Quebec City, a place where Leblanc, known for his poised playing, taught as well.
But he never got to play in Asia.
Toronto Star
Nov 14, 2007
John Terauds
Classical Music Critic
Four young New Brunswickers are treated like rock stars when they tour China and Japan, but barely register a ripple among chamber-music diehards in Toronto.
But we should heed the Asians. Quatuor Arthur-Leblanc, which played at the Jane Mallett Theatre for Music Toronto last night, presents the best kind of classical music – thoughtful as well as emotionally engaged.
There are no theatrics here, either in stage behaviour or in inflated contrasts and dynamics. Rather, this quartet shapes every part and every phrase into a cohesive, compelling whole.
As one of two ensembles-in-residence for Music Toronto this season, you should make a point of catching their next Toronto performance, on March 25.
Last night's program registered high in natural intensity, containing Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 4 as well as Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, better known as "Death and the Maiden." It started with the Vivace from André Prévost's String Quartet No. 1.
One of the unifying elements was the rock-solid musical and technical core needed to carry off this difficult music. This is something violinists Hibiki Kobayashi and Brett Molzan, violist Jean-Luc Plourde and cellist Ryan Molzan have in abundance.
They presented the difficulties with smoothed edges and elegant phrasings. It was the soapstone equivalent of rock-solid – and all the more beautiful for it.
The group has been working hard recently on Shostakovich's Quartets, and this was probably the most subtle interpretation possible of his characteristic passages from tension to release. A few times, the music was almost too pretty to have come from the pen of that fraught Soviet-era composer.
The quartet gets its name from a great Acadian violinist and composer, Arthur Leblanc, who died in 1985. In a funny twist of fate, the quartet laded a residency at the University of Laval in Quebec City, a place where Leblanc, known for his poised playing, taught as well.
But he never got to play in Asia.
