Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Mozart – Quartet in B flat K458 (Hunt).
Bartók – Six Romanian Dances.
Mozart – Clarinet Quintet.
This concert, in the presence of the Romanian ambassador, was given in celebration of Romania’s national day by Galway’s ensemble in residence since 2003, the all-Romanian ConTempo String Quartet.
While none of Romania's composers featured in the programme, the country was represented in an arrangement for string quartet of Six Romanian Dancesfor piano by the Hungarian composer Bartók (whose birthplace was part of Hungary in 1881 but became part of Romania when the boundary was redrawn in 1920).
As it did at a similar event three years ago, music originating in Romanian folk song inspired the ConTempo to perform with great heart-on-the-sleeve gusto, animating all its ancient but enduring colour and character.
Bartók arranged the six dances in pairs, which, taken all together, form a fast-slow-really fast structure. The ConTempo evinced a deep, earthy nostalgia in the slow section and generated a breathtaking excitement in the flying figures and thumping pulse of the finale.
Unusually for this quartet, both here and in Mozart's HuntQuartet (K458 in B flat), there were slight but distinctive lapses of total security and even balance from within the inside parts.
This was not, however, an issue in the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, for which the Romanians were joined by the Italian clarinettist Claudio Mansutti. Here, all lines enjoyed the ConTempo’s customary crystal clarity and sensitivity, and Mansutti played with a warm, fluid sound, above all in the beautiful, long melodic line of the slow second movement.
