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Sponsored by REVIEW: The Kuss String Quartet - Coffee Concert at
Brighton Dome Concert Hall
Sunday March 18
Published on Monday 19 March 2012 12:49
AN ARMENIAN who has been with them only four years seems to be the
unassuming influence behind The Kuss Quartet's remarkable and
individual musical and stage presence. Mikayel Hakhnazaryan is
different. He is not a habitually forceful player but differs from
other string quartet cellists in combining strength with a rarified
subtlety and a delicacy of touch.
This at the base of their sound gives the quartet a more
thought-provoking type of interpretative penetration and
Hakhnazaryan's playing is an absorbing and enriching complement to
leader Jana Kuss. Her sound on first violin is wonderfully rounded,
sensitive and controlled, while responsive not only as an initiator
but collectively with Oliver Wille's second fiddle and William
Coleman's viola to what Hakhnazaryan shapes not only below them, but
also among and above them when his often exquisite cantabile comes
through.
East Berliners, Kuss and Wille, have played together since
14-year-olds. Coleman has been a member for the past 10 of the Kuss
Quartet's 20 years. Hakhnazaryan, a devotee in particular of fellow
cellist Steven Isserlis, told me how, after meeting and playing with
the others in Cornwall at the twice-annual April Master Classes and
September Festival at Prussian Cove, near Land's End, he was invited
to join.
It is proving an inspired invitation because the Kuss are gaining ever
high praise, not least two days before this appearance, when Geoffrey
Norris looked at their new CD, Thème Russe, in The Telegraph
Review. Norris wrote of their panache being encapsulated in their
Tchaikowsky 1st String quartet - which they played on Sunday. A critic
in Houston,Texas,heard `a purity of sound almost heavenly'.
I find panache more in their programming and their effortless
readiness to transit the ever more many-sided String Quartet
repertoire.
This concert began with a ravishingly explorative account of
Mozart's masterly mysterious `Dissonance' Quartet and moved on
to the Tchaikowsky after first playing Stravinsky's tiny but alarming
and adventurously imaginative Three Pieces, which in 1914 followed his
ground-breaking Petrushka and The Rite Of Spring. More mystery
therefore followed that from Mozart with these rarely heard and
fascinatingly disparate items, created with all the entertaining
daring of the Ballet Russes' most arresting musical asset.
After the Tchaikowsky provided a romantic and rousing close, the Kuss
encored with two of the arrangements by Borodin of Tchaikowsky's piano
Album For Children - the viciously vivacious and taut Baba Yaga, and
the charming Sweet Dreams. Many of us will have played at least the
latter in our earlier-grade piano lessons.
The Kuss sit with their two violins placed in stereo, as do certain
orchestras, bringing greater transparency of sound and line, and Jana
Kuss sits next to her violist to induce additional benefits of
ensemble. The sum of the whole was set out before us from the start
when Mozart's sublime part writing was rendered palpable in all its
miniaturised glory.
The return of The Kuss Quartet will be relished.
The Coffee Concert Series of chamber music will return next season
with not six but seven events.
A launch concert on October 7 at The Dome (11am) will kick it off,
featuring The Castalian Quartet who are protégées of quartet leader
and teacher Levon Chilingirian, who is president of Strings Attached.
It is Strings Attached, the chamber music society for Brighton & Hove,
who have worked with Brighton Dome to make this current season such a
success in its first year since switching from St Nicholas Church
after having left Hove's Old Market.
The artistes are yet to be announced but the other dates for next
season are the Sundays of October 28 (2012), November 18, December 16,
January 20 (2013), February 17 and March 10; all at 11am.
Richard Amey
www.stringsattachedmusic.org.uk
http://www.chichester.co.uk/lifestyle/entertainment/review-the-kuss-string-quartet-coffee-concert-at-brighton-dome-concert-hall-sunday-march-18-1-3641600
From: A. Papazian
Brighton Dome Concert Hall
Sunday March 18
Published on Monday 19 March 2012 12:49
AN ARMENIAN who has been with them only four years seems to be the
unassuming influence behind The Kuss Quartet's remarkable and
individual musical and stage presence. Mikayel Hakhnazaryan is
different. He is not a habitually forceful player but differs from
other string quartet cellists in combining strength with a rarified
subtlety and a delicacy of touch.
This at the base of their sound gives the quartet a more
thought-provoking type of interpretative penetration and
Hakhnazaryan's playing is an absorbing and enriching complement to
leader Jana Kuss. Her sound on first violin is wonderfully rounded,
sensitive and controlled, while responsive not only as an initiator
but collectively with Oliver Wille's second fiddle and William
Coleman's viola to what Hakhnazaryan shapes not only below them, but
also among and above them when his often exquisite cantabile comes
through.
East Berliners, Kuss and Wille, have played together since
14-year-olds. Coleman has been a member for the past 10 of the Kuss
Quartet's 20 years. Hakhnazaryan, a devotee in particular of fellow
cellist Steven Isserlis, told me how, after meeting and playing with
the others in Cornwall at the twice-annual April Master Classes and
September Festival at Prussian Cove, near Land's End, he was invited
to join.
It is proving an inspired invitation because the Kuss are gaining ever
high praise, not least two days before this appearance, when Geoffrey
Norris looked at their new CD, Thème Russe, in The Telegraph
Review. Norris wrote of their panache being encapsulated in their
Tchaikowsky 1st String quartet - which they played on Sunday. A critic
in Houston,Texas,heard `a purity of sound almost heavenly'.
I find panache more in their programming and their effortless
readiness to transit the ever more many-sided String Quartet
repertoire.
This concert began with a ravishingly explorative account of
Mozart's masterly mysterious `Dissonance' Quartet and moved on
to the Tchaikowsky after first playing Stravinsky's tiny but alarming
and adventurously imaginative Three Pieces, which in 1914 followed his
ground-breaking Petrushka and The Rite Of Spring. More mystery
therefore followed that from Mozart with these rarely heard and
fascinatingly disparate items, created with all the entertaining
daring of the Ballet Russes' most arresting musical asset.
After the Tchaikowsky provided a romantic and rousing close, the Kuss
encored with two of the arrangements by Borodin of Tchaikowsky's piano
Album For Children - the viciously vivacious and taut Baba Yaga, and
the charming Sweet Dreams. Many of us will have played at least the
latter in our earlier-grade piano lessons.
The Kuss sit with their two violins placed in stereo, as do certain
orchestras, bringing greater transparency of sound and line, and Jana
Kuss sits next to her violist to induce additional benefits of
ensemble. The sum of the whole was set out before us from the start
when Mozart's sublime part writing was rendered palpable in all its
miniaturised glory.
The return of The Kuss Quartet will be relished.
The Coffee Concert Series of chamber music will return next season
with not six but seven events.
A launch concert on October 7 at The Dome (11am) will kick it off,
featuring The Castalian Quartet who are protégées of quartet leader
and teacher Levon Chilingirian, who is president of Strings Attached.
It is Strings Attached, the chamber music society for Brighton & Hove,
who have worked with Brighton Dome to make this current season such a
success in its first year since switching from St Nicholas Church
after having left Hove's Old Market.
The artistes are yet to be announced but the other dates for next
season are the Sundays of October 28 (2012), November 18, December 16,
January 20 (2013), February 17 and March 10; all at 11am.
Richard Amey
www.stringsattachedmusic.org.uk
http://www.chichester.co.uk/lifestyle/entertainment/review-the-kuss-string-quartet-coffee-concert-at-brighton-dome-concert-hall-sunday-march-18-1-3641600
From: A. Papazian