Volume 23 Issue 6 - March 2018

the Rolstons found a deeper way of listening. During their three years
of study there, they developed “the ability to hear sounds in very
specific ways, the ability to hear what’s going on with all the players
around you – to be able to anticipate changes in the music, but also
to be able to anticipate changes from one another and to quickly
respond. This is really complicated perceptual training.
“You’re always looking for that X factor, the exceptional thing in
the playing that you’re not expecting, that makes the performance of
music at the moment something memorable, and the Rolstons have
that capacity.”
Shiffman says: “They bring a joyous A game to everything they do.
I’m sure at times they’re tired and crabby and they don’t want to be on
the road. But you would never know it. They’re as excited to play for
you whether it’s Carnegie Hall or it’s Timmins, Ontario.”
The Rolston String Quartet plays at the Kitchener-Waterloo
Chamber Music Society March 7, the Jeffery Concerts in London
March 10, the Burlington Performing Arts Centre March 11 and the
Royal Conservatory’s Mazzoleni Hall April 8. The programs will
include combinations of Haydn, Beethoven, Debussy and Tchaikovsky
in support of Schumann’s hugely popular Piano Quintet.
The Eybler String Quartet came together in late 2004 to explore
the works of the first century of the string quartet, with a healthy
attention to lesser-known composers such as their namesake, Joseph
Leopold Edler von Eybler. The group plays on instruments appropriate
to the period of the music it performs. Violinist Julia Wedman
and violist Patrick G. Jordan are members of Tafelmusik Baroque
Orchestra; violinist Aisslinn Nosky is concertmaster of the Handel
and Haydn Society and principal guest conductor of the Niagara
Symphony Orchestra; Wedman and Nosky are also members of I
FURIOSI Baroque Ensemble. Cellist Margaret Gay is much in demand
as both a modern and period instrument player. Their March 9
Heliconian Hall recital includes early Haydn, late Mozart and their
contemporary Franz Asplmayr (1728-1786).
The Elias String Quartet has been together since they were students
in Manchester in 1998. Music Toronto’s Jennifer Taylor brought them
here in March 2015 for a memorable local debut which I chronicled in
these pages: “French sisters Sara and Marie Bittloch on violin and cello
set the tone for the quartet’s intimate sound and its impeccable sense
of ensemble. Equally attentive were second violinist Scotsman Donald
Grant and Swedish violist Martin Saving. Together the foursome
brought heavenly pianissimos and wonderful silences that allowed
Mozart’s music to breathe in his ‘Dissonance’ Quartet K465 and
unrelenting anger and passion to Mendelssohn’s last string quartet
without losing the ruminative lyricism of its slow movement.” Their
upcoming recital for the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto on March 8
features three pillars of the repertoire: Schubert’s Quartettsatz,
Janáček’s heartfelt String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters” and
Beethoven’s mighty String Quartet No.12 Op.127. The following day
the Elias performs the same program in Carnegie Hall.
The Penderecki String Quartet, currently celebrating their 25th
year as quartet-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo,
returns to Music Toronto March 15 for a concert of Schumann’s String
Quartet No.3, Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Oblique Light (2016), commissioned
as a sesquicentennial project by the Pendereckis and meant to
depict the quality of light in our northern land, and Elgar’s Quartet in
E Minor Op.83, which captured the spirit of his country cottage where
it was written at the end of WWI. As we go to press Music Toronto
has announced their 2018/19 season. Highlights include two appearances
by Marc-André Hamelin: a season-opening solo piano recital
and a Valentine’s Day chamber music concert with the Juilliard String
Quartet; and Cleveland Quartet Award winners, the Ariel Quartet,
who make their local debut.
Assorted Strings. The final concert of the Academy Concert Series
season on March 10 sees the return of violinist Scott St. John and
guitarist Lucas Harris, joining cellist Kerri McGonigle and violinist
Emily Eng in a remounting of one of ACS’ most talked about and
popular concerts from five years ago, “A Portrait of Paganini.” The
repertoire will include a Paganini guitar quartet – he wrote 15 – his
amiable Terzetto Concertante (for viola, cello and guitar) and one of
his 24 virtuosic solo violin caprices. The Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber
Music Society brings together the estimable Lafayette and Saguenay
(formerly the Alcan) Quartets on March 25 for a rare evening of
octets for strings by Mendelssohn, Niels Gade and Russian-Canadian
composer Airat Ichmouratov. (Music Toronto will present the identical
program March 14, 2019.) A completely different string confection
will be served on March 31 when 5 at the First Chamber Music Series
presents Arensky’s String Quartet No.2 for violin, viola and two cellos;
Jocelyn Morlock’s Blue Sun for violin and viola; and Dohnányi’s String
Sextet in B Minor.
And a Pianist. Dénes Várjon, admired by professional musicians
and European audiences but less well-known in North America,
makes a return visit to the Jane Mallett Theatre on March 27 under
the auspices of Music Toronto for a recital laden with music by his
Hungarian countrymen Bartók and Liszt. It begins with Beethoven’s
late Bagatelles Op.126, the composer’s final music for the piano.
Beethoven described it as “Six bagatelles or trifles for solo piano, some
of which are rather more developed and probably the best pieces of
this kind I have written.” Fiona Maddocks wrote in The Guardian
in February 2012 that Várjon’s ECM recording of Liszt’s Sonata in
B Minor “demands attention for its grandeur, clarity and incisive
20 | March 2018 thewholenote.com