Quartet rises to the occasion

Trust the Macau Festival to reveal musical secrets. Who, for instance, would guess that this is the 104th anniversary of Eduard Napravnik's Piano Quartet? Who, indeed, has ever heard of Eduard Napravnik? Well, the Moscow Piano Quartet, presently based in Portugal, celebrated this great Czech conductor in style by playing his piece. And in a most unusual programme, they also played Prokofiev's rarely performed First Violin Sonata and a most intriguing piece by the flavour-of-the-decade, Alfred Schnittke.

The young Moscow group were impressive enough, if only for overcoming maddening handicaps. The Lou Lim Iok Garden villa is charming enough, but the cavernous acoustics give a gloomy 19th-century sound. Nor do the incessant wailings of audience babies or perambulating listeners help.

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