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 COULL QUARTET

Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***

A complement which has delighted us for decades, the Coull Quartet has delivered so many exciting accounts of works from both the standard repertoire and more searching contemporary fields. Its  long residency at the University of Warwick proved intensely rewarding, enhancing the musical life of our region and beyond. But time takes its toll, and this concert for Leamington Music, virtually on the Coull’s home patch, provided both a poignant reminder of past glories and present problems.

The Coull still have a wonderful gift of empathy in ensemble, as exemplified in Mozart’s G major Quartet, K387 (incidentally, I have never before encountered its being afforded the sobriquet “Spring”, nor seen the programme-note extending the composer’s life by six years), with a wonderful air of civilised discussion, thinking and reacting as one, full of dynamic subtlety. Yet there was also tentativity in attack, not least in the opening of the fugal finale.

We moved from urbanity to a more urgent kind of engagement for Prokofiev’s String Quartet no.1, with accents both biting and grinding in the Vivace, and a poised response to the Romeo and Juliet-like romance of the concluding andante, full-throated melody unfolding under scudding accompaniments. Yet so much of this performance seemed studied, even over-rehearsed perhaps, and I have never before heard my beloved Prokofiev approaching dull-sounding.

Beethoven’s E minor Rasumovsky Quartet revealed an element of tiredness in the Coull’s dutiful account, intonation suffering under pressure, and with an occasional thinness of tone. We still relished dynamic subtleties, however, and the molto adagio cast quite a rapt spell with its interlocking lines.

There was a tiny encore, the minuet from Haydn’s Quartet Op20no4, and this was a further example of the Coull’s adept response to similar rhythmic conundrums in corresponding movements in the Mozart and Beethoven. Audience response was enthusiastic, but I remember greater glories in the past.

Christopher Morley

ends


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