REVIEWS
Le Soleil, Richard Boisvert
"...le quatuor a réussi à faire avaler un
répertoire qu'on croit habituellement réservé à une élite. Avec
eux, la musique prend vie...nous étions avec bonheur suspendus
à leurs archets."
Toronto Star,
John Terauds
"Quatuor Arthur-LeBlanc...presents the best
kind of classical music – thoughtful as well as
emotionally engaged." (for the complete review, click here)
Victoria Times Colonist, Deryk
Barker
"... a thoroughly idiomatic and engrossing
performance, it should arguably have come with a government
warning: performances this good are likely to lead to
addiction, even among first-time listeners ... my abiding
impression is of being swept away by the fire of the
performance, definitely one of the finest I have ever
heard."
Le Devoir, François
Tousignant
"Sans peine, les archets nous mènent dans les
méandres beethoveniens (op. 131) avec une unité de ton et
d'ensemble remarquable...intelligence dans le phrasé, sonorité
particulière de l'ensemble, chaude et pleine."
Globe & Mail, Ken Winters
"... imaginative and refreshing artistry ...
this performance ... was a wonder, dizzying yet very
splendid."
Radio-Canada FM, Midi-Culture,
François Tousignant
"Arrive le Quatuor Arthur-LeBlanc...le moment
de grâce."
Ottawa Citizen, Richard Todd
"When musicians can make you hear with new
ears a score as familiar as Mozart's Quartet in D, K. 575, it
must be said that they are passing from excellence to
greatness."
"The gentle elegance and soft sunshine of the
interpretation was beyond praise. It was as beautiful a
performance as you are likely to hear."
"The LeBlanc Quartet was full of passion and
steam, not to mention virtuoso ensemble playing; high level of
musicianship."
"The performance proved, if proof were needed,
that the Leblancs are one of Canada's finest chamber
ensembles."
Toronto Star, John Lehr
"...unity of feeling and execution"
Voir, François Desmeules
"...le nec plus ultra canadien."
Globe & Mail, Elissa
Poole
"New Brunswick has a secret, and it's a string
quartet - a very good string quartet - called Quatuor
Arthur-LeBlanc."
The Gazette, Arthur Kaptainis
"Quatuor Arthur-LeBlanc plays Haydn, Murphy
and Grieg: top notable-10 list of the year in classical
music...silky sound and strong expression give this disc a
distinctive edge."
Globe & Mail, Philip
Anson
"...the superb Moncton based Quatuor
Arthur-LeBlanc."
Otto Joachim
"Their sense of intonation is impeccable,
their ensemble playing one of the best...very high caliber."
Kelly-Marie Murphy
"...great champions of my music, I feel truly
honored and privileged to have worked with them. I know them to
be artists of the highest caliber with a strong commitment to
Canadian music and culture."
Quatuor Arthur-Leblanc
rocks
Toronto Star
Nov 14, 2007
John
Terauds
Classical Music Critic
Four young New Brunswickers are treated like rock stars when
they tour China and Japan, but barely register a ripple among
chamber-music diehards in Toronto.
But we should heed the Asians. Quatuor Arthur-Leblanc, which
played at the Jane Mallett Theatre for Music Toronto last
night, presents the best kind of classical music –
thoughtful as well as emotionally engaged.
There are no theatrics here, either in stage behaviour or in
inflated contrasts and dynamics. Rather, this quartet shapes
every part and every phrase into a cohesive, compelling
whole.
As one of two ensembles-in-residence for Music Toronto this
season, you should make a point of catching their next Toronto
performance, on March 25.
Last night's program registered high in natural intensity,
containing Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 4 as well
as Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, better known as
"Death and the Maiden." It started with the Vivace from André
Prévost's String Quartet No. 1.
One of the unifying elements was the rock-solid musical and
technical core needed to carry off this difficult music. This
is something violinists Hibiki Kobayashi and Brett Molzan,
violist Jean-Luc Plourde and cellist Ryan Molzan have in
abundance.
They presented the difficulties with smoothed edges and
elegant phrasings. It was the soapstone equivalent of
rock-solid – and all the more beautiful for it.
The group has been working hard recently on Shostakovich's
Quartets, and this was probably the most subtle interpretation
possible of his characteristic passages from tension to
release. A few times, the music was almost too pretty to have
come from the pen of that fraught Soviet-era composer.
The quartet gets its name from a great Acadian violinist and
composer, Arthur Leblanc, who died in 1985. In a funny twist of
fate, the quartet laded a residency at the University of Laval
in Quebec City, a place where Leblanc, known for his poised
playing, taught as well.
But he never got to play in Asia. |