Classical review: Marmen Quartet

Music in the Round audiences at the Crucible Studio wear many labels: regular, discerning, long-memoried and loyal. So the Marmen Quartet’s return felt a bit like a homecoming.

The performance was a matter of life and death, Johannes Marmen said, starting with a celebration of life: Haydn’s late quartet in G.

The Marmen Quartet has a new cellist, Steffan Morris and from the first staccato chords (always difficult to get synchronised) it was clear he fits in perfectly and his first tricky upward triplet arpeggios flowed effortlessly, complemented by the sweet tone of Johannes Marmen’s upper register.

So to death, a portrayal of the demise of Yukio Mishima in Philip Glass’s third quartet.

The six movements were written as a soundtrack to a biographical film, and presumably they worked well as muzak. Unfortunately as a concert piece the music fails to offer anything other than the challenge of staying awake.

Thank goodness, after the interval, death turned to life in the form of Beethoven’s A minor quartet Op.132. This was a challenge, not least to the Marmens, performing late, great, Beethoven in the birthplace of the Lyndays to a long-memoried audience.

But they rose to it with the required pathos and passion; in fact at least one member of the audience was dabbing her eyes after the long adagio. Peter Cropper would have been proud of his protégés.