Triumphant and strong music

Atrium Strong Quartet, Shakespeare Institute, Match 6.

“THAT was hard work,” said Shirley Griffiths, one of the nine cello desks, at the end of the long awaited Mahler’s Titan Symphony.

Joyous and optimistic, opening with an evocation of dawn, it closes with a roof-raising finale. The substantial slow introduction will always be a mighty challenge to all but the most technically skilled and hugely cohesive banks of strings. In recent months we have been spoilt by the silky CBSO strings in their wonderful Mahler cycle in Birmingham.

Once the woodwind and full throaty brass sections (eight horns) become involved we heard plenty of incisiveness in both the waltz-like second movement and the triumphant marching third movement during which the horns stand up to give the largest possible sound.

Boyan Ivanov, a recent Guildhall graduate and winner of the Making Music Award for Young Concert Artists, joined a most supportive WSO for Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A. Displaying excellent control and certain tenderness in the adagio, Boyan delighted in this well-balanced concerto which recalls earlier themes in the finale’s helter-skelter.

Making another welcome whistle-stop tour of the UK, Atrium String Quartet were guests of the Stratford-upon-Avon Chamber Music Society. Together for over a decade these brilliant musicians, last seen in Leamington in October 2009, began with Tchaikovsky’s most tuneful String Quartet No 1 in D with invigorating pace, before delivering the composer’s deeply felt account of folk songs he heard and composed. A brilliant Tchaikovsky climax gave way to the taxing Prokofiev Quartet No 1 which played to an Atrium supreme strength, that of togetherness.

Individual strengths surfaced during the lovely Variations of the second movement of Arensky’s Quartet No2. Sometimes viola led, sometimes cello led, the playing was sublime.

Talent spotters from Bromsgrove and Malvern looking at future bookings would be left in no doubt their bookings were well made, leaving in a happy mood.

Clive Peacock