On Tuesday, February 11, 2025, at 7:30 pm the Friends welcomed the Schumann Quartet to our concert platform at the Vancouver Playhouse for the first time. While they have played in Vancouver before, this was the first time we have heard them play. This young German string quartet consists of three brothers, violinists Erik and Ken, and cellist Mark Schumann, who have added violist Veit Hertenstein to the mix.
This was also the first concert since the death of 97-year-old Eric Wilson, late president of Friends’ volunteer board of directors. Before the Schumann Quartet took the stage on Tuesday, Paris Simons, vice-president of the Friends board, spoke to commemorate Mr. Wilson’s life and legacy with the organization and the larger cultural community. Earlier posts on the Friends website and Facebook page set out most of what was said.
Also, once again we ensured that programme notes for concertgoers were available at the Friends website several weeks before the concert.
The Schumann Quartet are part of a wave of young European, and, especially, young German string quartets, who each have developed a distinctive sound and approach to the classic repertoire and contemporary music. The musicians began with Mozart’s String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K499 “Hoffmeister” (named after his friend and music publisher, Franz Anton Hoffmeister). They launched into the music with a characteristic warm and clean tone. This was a flexible and engaging modern reading of the music, rather than a “historically informed performance”. The Quartet gave us a pleasingly balanced and dynamic interpretation filled with classical charm, pointed skipping rhythms, and a well-blended singing tone. This mature Mozart work (written when the brilliant composer was 31, five years before his death in 1791) includes a dynamic range within its structure that brought occasional flares of emotion to the sound from all four string instruments that felt spontaneous while also wholly appropriate.
After the warm glow of their Mozart interpretation, the musicians gave us an energetic but emotionally cool approach to Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1 in B Minor, Opus 50, composed in 1931. Demonstrating a nimble ability to jump from soft to forceful and loud phrases – still with a lovely blend and balance to the strings – the music was given the sweeping shape needed to maintain coherence. Despite the work being somewhat neoclassical, the tonality and attack of this modernist 20th Century music was a bracing contrast with what we enjoyed in Mozart’s classical work, even if this particular view of the composer’s score produced a distant and cool reading.
After the intermission, the Schumann Quartet performed Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 “From my life”. This music is popular enough that Tuesday’s performance was the 13th time it has been played in concert for Friends since the first in 1952. And on this occasion, it was while playing Smetana’s music that the musicians raised their level of artistry. The passion and beauty that they brought to this Romantic and autobiographical masterwork by the Bohemian composer was electric. They now had the entire audience enraptured. This was a live performance for the ages, rather than just another lovely concert by a fine ensemble. The phrasings, the musical architecture, the emotions were all immediate and tangible. And despite the pause needed at the start of the final movement when a string on Erik Schumann’s violin broke and he went backstage to replace it, that sense of excitement was maintained throughout. The final notes of the music died away, leaving a silence while the audience drew breath. And then they erupted in applause and bravos, taking to their feet to cheer this amazing experience.
The musicians returned to the stage for their curtain call clearly smiling. Ken Schumann spoke briefly to dedicate their encore to the memory and spirit of Eric Wilson – and didn’t tell us what they would play. But we recognized the elegance and wit of Haydn. Turns out it was the 2nd movement of his String Quartet in C major, Opus 33 No. 3 Hob III: 39 ”The Bird”, which would have pleased Mr. Wilson, and gave all of us something light and refreshing to cap an emotional evening.
From this first visit by a young ensemble, we have only one week between this and our next concert featuring our long-term friends who make up the Han Finckel Setzer Trio. We hope you will join us to hear them play music by Haydn, Beethoven, and Dvořák on Tuesday, February 18, 2025, at the Vancouver Playhouse. And we hope you will help us celebrate the life and legacy of Eric Wilson, who was close friends with all three of these celebrated chamber musicians.
