Newbury Weekly News, November 2007
by Patrick Cogswell
» Anything I could say would be superfluous to describe the excellence of these four young players.
Based in, and supported by, Switzerland, the meticulous craftsmanship of their playing is all you would exspect. It comes with a passionate emphasis that makes them sound not just like four fine players but a living and breathing embodiment of the best of the work itself.
Their accaount of Haydn’s 76 took them quite out of th ordinary. Those who heard the Polish Chamber orchestra at the Newbury Spring Festival a few years back will recognise their gripping style. Mendelssohn too would have been jumping out of his seat at the extra dimension they gave to the A Minor quartet. More of that later.
The violin parts were taken by Rostislav Kojevnikov and Barbara Kuster, while Justyna Sliwa played her viola with a wonderful emphatic style, despite a raging headache and fever.
The central pieces of the programme came from an entirely different tradition of composers who, as Andreas Mueller (cello) put it, “are still alive”.
Asasello’s programme notes took a deal of trouble to tell us about composers Michael Jarrell and Thomas Adès, charting them not as hazards to musical navigation but as a broad and sunny expanse of new ocean. Modern composers will argue thet, precious gold though the great classics are, their metal comes from a mine now worked out.
The question is, therefore, why use instruments and skills that evolved in a purely classic tradition to produce novel and different sounds. Is this an extension of the art or is it a distortion? New sounds or just new sound effects?
Asasello themselves provide the answer. Superlatives are inadequate to describe their performance of Haydn and especially of Mendelssohn; the rising and falling waves of music, the attack and their ability to let the notes breathe, however prestissimo.
They also choose to devote their time, and that same incredible skill to the new music. This is not out of love of novelty; they play because they appreciate the music in a way that only superbly sensitive musicians can. Their approach to the classics is likewise enriched because it comes from the direction of the new.
Viva Helvetia and another brilliant first for Elizabeth Davis and her team at Hungerford. «