Music / CIMF, Concert 17, “A Memory of Russia”. At the Fitters’ Workshop, May 6. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

A COUPLE of years ago our editor sent me off on a dark and cold winter night to a first concert by a new, young string quartet. The venue was the Campbell Scout Hall, an uninviting concrete-block cube tucked in behind the Campbell shops and the ensemble was the Alma Moodie Quartet.

They were a group of young musicians who had headed to Europe to learn and to play music, but had ended up back in their home town of Canberra when the covid lockdowns began. Alma Moodie was an Australian violinist who had spent her music life in Europe, where she was well known between the wars.

The quartet, violinists Kristian Winther and Anna Da Silva Chen, violist Dana Lee and cellist Thomas Marlin, impressed at that first concert and continued to do so at this performance.

They played two works, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet no 3 in Eb minor, written in 1976 and then, with pianist Edward Neeman a piano quintet by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, written in 1958.

For the Tchaikovsky quartet, Anna Da Silva Chen played the first violin part and Kristian Winther the second. This was a tight and focused performance of a most attractive piece of music. The use of mutes on all four instruments in the third movement was most effective as was their attention to the dynamics of the work throughout.

Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) grew up in the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union and considered a significant Russian composer in the post-Stalinist years.

This piano quintet was a fascinating work with hints of jazz chords in the first movement, some unexpected interplay between the piano and viola in the third movement and a final movement which went in some unexpected directions before a sudden but effective ending.

An uplifting piece of music with a joy to it, Neeman’s playing supporting and lifting the quartet throughout. Much hooting and hollering from the audience with many on their feet in recognition of some very fine music.