Kleio Quartet
Levinsky Hall, Plymouth University
09 November 2024
I have had the pleasure of seeing and hearing the Kleio Quartet before. Since then they have become
increasingly well-known and have won awards all over Europe as well as the UK. Recently they have
been chosen by Radio 3 to join the New Generation Artist programme .
This is no surprise. This all-female quartet, featuring Juliette Roos, Katherine Yoon, Yume Fujise and
Eliza Millett take on challenging works and this concert was no exception. As promised by Robert Taub at last
month’s concert, Bela Bartok is honoured throughout this season’s programme. Joining Bartok in this
programme were Henry Purcell and Maurice Ravel, whose work featured here would probably have been
the most familiar to the audience.
Purcell’s Fantasia No 4 in F major, No 6 in E major and No 7 in G major opened the programme. All
of these are relatively short works, with multiple movements and changes of pace and mood. The
togetherness of the musicians, their total concentration as they steer through those changes, show how
sensitively alert to their companions they are. Each section of the music itself has its own shape,
separating the sounds of the four instruments and then coming together in unison to mark an ending.
There are wonderful chromatic climbs, instruments interweaving cleverly and then coming together in
delicious closure in the pacier sections, with tender dwelling on the lengthier sounds in the slower ones.
The quartet’s balance of the instruments is superb, enhanced by their obvious enjoyment and empathy
with their fellow musicians.
Bartok’s String Quartet No 5 followed the Purcell. Not as strange a coupling as it may seem since both
composers, though centuries apart in time, feature counterpoint and moments of deliberate crunching
dissonance.
I have found that listening to Bartok requires enormous concentration and this pays off as it reveals so
much of his method, of the extraordinary swing between his background of Hungarian peasant songs
and rhythms and his broad understanding of Western European harmonies plus the brasher, jazz
influenced music of the United States.
The piece is tremendously testing for the four musicians, who rose to the challenge wonderfully, their
whole bodies responding to the strong bowing required and the changes of pace and mood. The
hobbledehoy peasant rhythms give way to wistful melodies; the scurrying speed of some sections,
climbing and falling, give way to urgent emphatic single notes. Concentration from the players, necessary
always of course, here shows in the alert tension of their bodies, the give and take between all four, as
the piece is taken over first by one instrument, then by another – each having its say. The result of this
give and take between the four is playful and the contrasts in the whole work are breathtaking and
memorable. The second movement, for instance, is atmospheric, mysterious, both sad and beautiful,
even other-worldly in mood and the fourth movement, also slow as opposed to the first, third and fifth,
which are full of those scurrying runs, is like a wander through a glade, darkened by trees, full of bird-like
twitters, animals listening with twitching ears and running to escape danger till we are returned to peace.
It is certainly because of the skill of the musicians themselves that I was drawn into a memorable
experience which will stay with me for a long time and which has created an interest and perhaps a
deeper understanding of Bartok as a composer.
Ravel’s String Quartet, written in 1903, ended the evening’s programme, after the interval. A total
contrast to the first two pieces, we are instantly immersed in the image of a lush sunny meadow, full of
burgeoning flowers. The mood is idyllic as the baton of peaceful beauty passes from one instrument to
another, with similar melodic phrasing. Even the occasional ripple of unrest that stirs the mood does not
last long for each instrument in turn insists on imposing peace against the stirring of unrest that the other
three project. Strokes of the bows become longer and deeper as the dream takes hold. In this piece,
whereas with the Bartok a fierce concentration among the players dominated, the player’s faces reflect
the beauty of the phrases they have been given. The second movement features plucked notes against
beautiful melodies which lead into a slow and dreamy third movement, gradually speeding up until it ends
with a flourish. Finally the last movement begins with a sombre viola against tremolos from all three of
the others. This movement is more restless, full of delightful little hiccupping phrases that interrupt the
flow and ending with a lumpy uneven rhythm that perhaps mimics the ecstatic uneven running of a small
child, exploring the natural world around him.
To be there at this concert with these young talented players was a truly wonderful experience. I loved
the way they finished each movement with a slow or fast (depending on the pace of the previous
movement) flourish of their bows. This enabled the audience to remain in the mood they had just
created. Go and see this quartet if you possibly can. They are clearly destined for a great future.
