This reviewer...: The Smith Quartet

Music Network Presents:

The SMITH Quartet

With GERARD McCHRYSTAL saxophone

Thursday 10^th April, Curtis Auditorium, CIT Cork School of Music, 8pm

The Smith Quartet, referred to variously as Britain’s answer to the Kronos Quartet and Britain’s premiere contemporary string quartet, performed last night in the company of Gerard McChrystal on the second date of a ten-date tour which sees them play both north and south of the border, culminating on Saturday night in Portstewart, Coleraine. The programme chosen is one, which profiles some the leading contemporary composers working in Ireland and the UK today, including Mícheál Ó Súilleabháinn, one-time head of our own UCC Department of Music.

To quote their own notes and to give you a flavour for the group itself, “For almost twenty years, the Smith Quartet has been a leading light of the contemporary music scene: over one hundred new works have been written for the ensemble by a veritable who’s who of composers including Kevin Volans, Django Bates, Michael Nyman and Stephen Montague. The quartet has worked closely with Steve Reich, most notably on his work Different Trains …”. Heavyweight names indeed!

But enough background and on to the concert itself. It opened, after a bit of a chat from Mr McChrystal to set the scene, with five of jazz pianist Chick Corea’s Children’s Songs. Those chosen moved from the gentle fairytale to the realms reminiscent of 1,001 Arabian Nights and Pan’s Labyrinth. It was (possibly) coincidental that as the last piece opened with a startling robustness a young girl in a row ahead of me had a nosebleed. Definitely a coincidence.

Changing style completely, the Debussy and the Ravel were run together. I confess, Syrinx is one of my personal favourites and I’m always partial to a spot of Ravel. And this particular Ravel, with which I was unfamiliar, is a little gem. Perhaps, that is why, for me, the concert peaked early and was on a gentle slope downwards from then one, with the one high point in the second half being Farrell’s The Pilgrim’s Return. Hunting/Gathering & Stamp are both technically difficult, both to play and on the ear and Óiche Nollag didn’t settle until the it moved into a jazz interpretation towards the end of the piece. The final pieces, If & Why, by Michael Nyman, originally written to texts by a Roger Pulvers and included in the 1995 Japanese animated feature film “The Diary of Anne Frank” were saccharine in the extreme. A glance at the included lyrics only confirmed that feeling.

However, programming aside, the Smith Quartet are ruthlessly good at what they do and Mr McChrystal produced a sound that was so smooth and warm that it was only short of a cat stretched out in front of him, purring. Theirs is an (apparently) effortless grace and dexterity with none of the showboating, which can be prevalent in the classical world. They were a joy to see and hear.