Eyebrows lowered as the Smith tackles contemporary music

THE CLASSICAL music scene in Cyprus is notoriously weak, therefore it’s with particular pleasure that music lovers welcome tours of foreign ensembles. Yet in the run-up to the Smith Quartet’s tour this week, many eyebrows were raised.

Contemporary music in Cyprus? Will anyone come? Come they did in Nicosia on Tuesday night, and the reception was surprisingly warm.

It is testament to the insight, musical accomplishment and empathy of this British quartet that they succeeded in communicating to their audience the complexity and the beauty of what is commonly termed ‘difficult’ music.

The programme began with Michael Nyman’s (of The Piano fame) String Quartet No. 3, chosen as a soft introduction to the rest of the evening. No shock to the system, it’s a beautiful piece of music, in which the strings build up layer upon layer of sound, steeped in Romanian folk music and haunted by images of the 1989 Romanian revolution.

Larry Austin’s fiercely energetic Ottuplo! is an excellent contrast. Meaning eight-fold, the composition unfolds by way of a conversation between the quartet on stage and their ‘virtual’ counterpart, relayed over the giant amplifier and pre-recorded by the Smith. A mesmerising array of techniques transform the sound of strings into calls of nature, the patter of rain and tolling bells, while Django Bates’ Pond Life was also a vivid and rhythmically exciting rendition of the bizarre.

The second half opens with Volans’ Hunting and Gathering. The music, although perhaps less satisfying that its forebears, was marked by beautiful harmony and instantaneous mood changes. Conversations between the first violin and the cello were well-executed, and the opening melody from the viola was superb.

Graham Fitkin’s Servant, which concluded the evening, epitomised the notion of harmony and interchanging melody. Motifs are passed around, developed and interchanged in both frenzy and peace, beginning and ending with a unitary voice. The Smith Quartet is playing at the Markideio Theatre in Paphos tomorrow night and at the Larnaca Municipal Theatre on Saturday night. All performances start at 8.30pm.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.