Hungarian musicians

Dominion Chalmers is one of the largest churches in town, domed, which gives it great accoustics, and it holds about a thousand people. Despite arriving in the queue late (40 minutes before the start of the concert) I still managed to sit on the front row last night to see the Keller Quartet from Budapest who gave us Bartók's first quartet and Ligeti's first quartet (Métamorphoses Nocturnes), both of which are played through without a break between movements, if you can call them movements—the programme listed sixteen changes of tempo during the Ligeti. The Bartók was not as discordant as are his later quartets and finished with a gripping accelerando. In the Ligeti, which Chris sometimes plays from a CD in the car, so that I recognised it, it was fascinating to watch the players manipulate the trills and tremulos, slurs and slides—in the Tempo di Valse section, un poco capriccioso—and the way their fingers stroked the strings to give an accompaniment in harmonics in the last section but one.

After the interval they were joined by the Canadians Douglas McNabney (on viola) and Denise Djokic (on 'cello) for a spirited performance of Tchaikovsky's Sextet which I don't remember having heard before. Most enjoyable. The last movement sounded like a Russian dance.