Music / “Notes of Obsession”, The Phoenix Collective. At All Saints Anglican Church, Ainslie, October 14. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

THIS brace of tragic compositions by two famous composers was, as Phoenix Collective director Dan Russell told the audience last night, “quite intense.”

That was an understatement, for this was surely the most challenging concert in Phoenix’s 2022 season as the ensemble – Russell and Pip Thompson on violin, Ella Brinch on viola and Andrew Wilson on cello – performed two profoundly disturbing works written late in the lives of the respective composers, Leo Janáček, and Franz Schubert.

Phoenix has made a practice of introducing the works the audience, easily done in the agreeable acoustic of All Saints Anglican Church.

Fittingly, Brinch was the one chosen  to introduce Janáček’s String Quartet No.2, “Intimate Letters”, for the viola part in the composition is believed to represent the voice of Kamila Stösslová, the woman, 38 years his junior with whom Janáček became obsessed – hence the title of the concert.

That obsession, we heard, was not reciprocated, although through a complicated set of circumstances, Stösslová was by his side when Janáček died, and the “intimate letters” of the title refers to comprised more than 700 epistolary exchanges, allowing plenty of room for speculation.

This complex but quite short composition defies verbal description, with more than 26 time changes and 62 changes of tempo representing  various stages in their relationship, a challenge  Phoenix musicians rose to superbly.

The opening  movement suggests the first meeting between the pair, where the voice of Brinch’s violin was consistent and strong while the work of the two violins  full of conflict, suggested by the aggressive ponticello playing that reflects the  “thunderbolt” which hit the composer when he first met Stösslová.

The second movement in part  represents  the first kiss (probably imaginary), beginning in a more tender mode. But as Wilson’s cello underscored the other three instruments with their overlapping motifs, it grew to a complex high point, with many of the aforementioned tempo changes.

The third movement begins  with joyful moments where Janáček imagines playing with the imaginary child of their love, but give way to a cello solo where Wilson’s skills were at last given scope.

The final movement, jaunty moments in fits and starts, is intended to illustrate that Stösslová was always beyond the composer’s grasp.

The second work of the evening was no less intense and much more famous – Schubert’s String Quartet D810 No.14, “Death and the Maiden”.

The three movements were built around Schubert’s song of the same name in 1824, as he faced poverty and impending death.

The lengthy opening allegro again provided Wilson with a substantial cello part, but the striking element of this movement, was the virtuosity of the musicians as the responded to the shifts in mood, intensity and volume.

The real centre of this competition is in the second movement, famously a conversation between, the figure of Death and a young girl who is at first reluctant, but finally seduced by Death. This was handled very delicately by the quartet, nothing unrestrained.

The short third movement, a scherzo containing touches of the minuet, gave violinists Thompson and Russell the opportunity to show their capacity to creating a lighter mood.

After a momentary pause, the final movement, an extended Tarantella (literally the dance of the tarantula but in musical tradition the dance of death) saw all four musicians coming together, moving apart and finishing up with an exciting finale.

Russell stepped up to announce a final, unprogrammed work, a Danish folk tune called “Ae Romeser,” but though more calming and more tuneful after the storm and stress of the first two, it was probably a step too far. Better to have left us gobsmacked.