More musical enthusiasm from Rhapsody Quintet

By Stephen Pedersen / Arts Reporter REVIEW CORNER
The Halifax Herald Limited, Sunday, January 16, 2000

Salon Delights. Rhapsody Quintet. RHAP CD002

Salon or parlour music is on the lightest side of light classical music. These short pieces were written to be played by amateurs - good ones, of course - or by hard-working professionals who often found willing ears not in the concert halls but amid the tinkle of teacups and the clink of knives and forks in elegant restaurants patronised by the moneyed classes in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.

They also went by the name of "characteristic" pieces - musical portraits, landscapes and love songs. The titles of the works played by Halifax's Rhapsody Quintet of symphony players on Salon Delights will give you an idea of the kind of thing: Down in Zanzibar, Aeroplane Galop, Water Nymph, Dance of an Ostracised Imp, Demoiselle Chic, etc., to cite six of the 14 titles on the CD.

It's a precious atmosphere, and though technically easy, playing them interestingly requires a great deal of skill and musical imagination. The genre's thesaurus of musical gestures is very limited and much simplified - a lot of melodic dipping and diving, predictable dance rhythms, an ineradicable degree of pomposity and shallow feeling appropriate to upright society. It takes some skill to play them innocently.

But when played very well, there is much to charm the ear, a kind of idealistic picture of the social world even if it is expressed in a musical language that tends to slip rather easily into background music: music to be talked over at a reception or tone-y party.

Rhapsody Quintet shows a great deal of musical enthusiasm in performing these works. The tempos are stirring in the fast ones, though a little too rigidly adhered to in the case of Moszkowski's Spanish Dance No. 1, for example. The quintet plays fluently, however, and with a pleasant ensemble sound.

Salon Delights is a must-have album for those who want something to soften and humanize the silences entertaining friends on the patio, or at a house party.

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