Quartet in G, Op 18 No 2 - Beethoven
Quartet No 2 - Tunde
Jegede Quartet in F - Ravel
The Brodsky Quartet are a slick and glossy act. They are what you might call a designer quartet, an upmarket musical label, circulating well beyond the confines of the regular classical world, through work with the likes of Elvis Costello, Bjork and Paul McCartney.
The modishness of their connections was reflected in Thursday's concert at St Canice's Cathedral in a number of ways. The quartet by Tunde Jegede, "a UK-based composer of African origin" in the words of the programme booklet, is one of a set the Brodskys commissioned to celebrate the bicentenary of the six quartets of Beethoven's Op. 18. The two encores they offered were specially-commissioned variations on the "Ode to Joy" theme from Beethoven's Choral Symphony, by John Tavener and Ray Davies (of Kinks fame).
The Brodsky's finely-worked, often beautifully coloured playing reveals itself at its most alluring in soft passages, where their style is a frequent delight to the ear.
Yet, somehow, it's a style which doesn't readily capture the bigger picture or often convey the sense of complete movements as an organic whole. In the older music, it was the fleet second and fourth movements of the Ravel which were most successfully lifted out of the realm of what sometimes seemed like elegantly-turned soundbite sequences.
When the Brodsky's leader introduced the quartet by Jegede, you could hear him struggling to avoid that dread word "accessible". In the event, the short, minimalism-influenced work proved disappointingly bland and inconsequential. The two encores were nothing more than trifles with famous names attached.
