The Famous Five Play Brahms: The Tinalley String Quartet Plays with Kristian Chong by Andrew Miller

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The Tinalley String Quartet.

“As dreams are made on”
Sydney Opera House, Utzon Room: 23 July 2012

The Tinalley String Quartet
Adam Chalabi – violin
Lerida Delbridge – violin
Justin Williams – viola
Michelle Wood – cello

Webern – Langsamer Satz
Schumann – String Quartet in A minor, opus 41 no. 1
Brahms – Piano Quintet in F minor, opus 34
Kristian Chong – piano

In this the last performance of this program, the Tinalley String Quartet with their usual polish and serious, concentrated approach dipped into distant points in, without any futile attempt to span, romantic chamber music. The all minor key pieces each stood out distinctly by virtue of the composers’ individual emotional and intellectual language, while comfortably yoked together under the Tinalley’s distinctive voice. The subtler sense of humor, perhaps broader range of experience held in Brahms’ music made a very satisfying conclusion to the evening fitting so well the group’s very human tone — warm, but well-rounded and very clear, though at the same time they have a certain relaxed attitude, coloring the group tone as fits the music and their idea of the whole, rather than scrabbling for fleeting spectacle, which makes the performance very memorable. Kristian Chong, the invited pianist, got along very well with the group. Managing to get a remarkably sultry tone out of his Steinway, he seemed to expand the existing coloring of the group for that grand Brahms’ quintet, contributing as much oscuro as chiaro. No multiple-source fluorescent globes here. In the more individualistic writing which brings out each five of the players at some point, each showed an unforced and personal expression yet were always aware of the quintet as an expressive instrument in which their individual thoughts would fly on, the larger group picking up and carrying on the curve of their solo line.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the arts!