A concert of compromises
Allegri String Quartet, Cultural Centre Concert Hall, Monday, October 11 LIKE Governor Patten's election compromise and semi-ripened Camembert cheese, the concert by the Allegri String Quartet Monday evening pleased nobody.
It was a concert of compromises and self-conscious amiability, but its success, even for neophyte audiences, was limited.
The idea might have seemed admirable. Allow one of the world's most accomplished chamber music ensembles an evening where (to quote the programme notes) ''music of a fairly 'serious' nature . . . is coupled with arrangements from the world of 'light' music . . . making no real distinction between the two worlds.'' The predicament is that Mozart, Lennon, Gershwin and Tchaikovsky didn't sit down to write ''serious'' or ''light'' music. They wrote in their own musical languages, and were meant to be understood in that language.
It was commendable that the Allegri tried oh so hard to show that they could speak all these languages. But the understanding was all too cute, and the result was all too confusing.
The word ''light'' itself is an intractable misnomer. If one must classify the music, the Beatles wrote pop, Scott Joplin wrote ragtime, Cole Porter wrote complex show tunes, Gershwin wrote . . . well, anything but light music.
The Allegri played all of this music, with technical brilliance. But their arrangements made the music light, actually trivialised it. Thus, it became a minor affront to the memory of the composers.
Some of it did work. The excerpt from American In Paris was hardly Gershwin orchestration, but by arranging for string quartet, one could begin to understand the complex harmonic changes.
The Scott Joplin worked, because in New Orleans ''cat houses'', string players alternated with piano players, so it seemed natural.
The Beatles didn't work because their original music used string quartet. The Allegri was a much of a muchness.
The ''serious'' music was taken seriously by the audience. But as the Allegri certainly knows, music should be felt, not tolerated seriously.
They played one movement from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the slow movement from Borodin, a rare scherzo from Tchaikovsky. They cheated on Smetana's ''From My Life'' quartet which really is tragic music, by playing only the ironic polka.
Of course the Allegri String Quartet can't help but be breathtaking, no matter what they play. After 40 years (for most of them), they have the individual skills and the communal understanding to offer ravishing beauty under any circumstances.
But what circumstances were these? The attire of this 40-year-old partnership gave the game away. They wore tuxedo shirts, tuxedo trousers and cummerbunds. But no bow tie, no tuxedo jacket. The Allegri donned, in clothes and music, a kind of halfway-house stage chic .
The audience respected them for it, and the concert was, admittedly, a painless experience. The predicament is that any concert, whether classical or pop, must have its pain as well as its exhilaration.
