Kromatik Quartet/ Ensemble

The Abbey Church, North Berwick, 5/10/2025

Kromatik Quartet, Tamas Fejes and Mihaly Stefko, violins, Mary Ward, viola, Natasha Szervanszky-Cavaye, cello, with Sally Gray, clarinet

After moving from the Quartermile in the centre of Edinburgh in August after the Festival some people suggested we might miss the music in Edinburgh. Well last Thursday we had a great folk concert in our local folk club, The Nitten Folk Club, in Newtongrange with the great Brian McNeil, on Saturday a superb concert of enlightenment music in the splendid Dalkeith Palace and on Sunday this excellent concert in North Berwick with the Kromatik Quartet and Sally Gray on the clarinet. The only negative note was that the Abbey Church was only half full for a concert that would not have been out of place in the Edinburgh International Festival. I can only presume that being a new quartet they haven’t mastered publicity, because North Berwick can produce full houses in the Fringe By The Sea or the Lammermuir Festival.

I was only notified of the concert by Eventbrite the day before and of course I thought it was a local amateur group, so when I looked at the CV’s of the quartet I was deeply impressed. Their leader, Tamas Fejes, is leader and assistant leader of the RSNO and teaches at the Conservatoire in Glasgow, second violinist Mihaly Stefko is a prizewinning chamber musician, Mary Ward, viola player, plays for the BBC Scottish and Scottish Opera and Natasha Szervanszky-Cavaye, cello, was sub principal of the Budapest Symphony and founding member of the Szervanszky Quartet. 

This is a very high quality quartet but of course with a new quartet the question is would they gel as musicians? One of my favourite books is Vikram Seth’s ‘ Equal Music’ which explores the dynamics of a string quartet and crucially their interaction. As a young man in the 1960s I was educated into the world of the string quartet by the Alberni Quartet in Harlow, a new town in Essex. Harlow Development Corporation and Harlow Council in the early 1960s decided to improve the musical culture of the new town by inviting a young string quartet formed in the Royal Academy of Music to come and live in Harlow and gave them all flats, a rehearsal space and ten thousand pounds a year to live on and perform in Harlow. It was a great success. The Alberni gave 8-10 concerts a year in the town, created music schools in every comprehensive school, and helped form a Harlow Chorus and a Harlow Symphony Orchestra. So successful was it that the BBC made a documentary called ‘The Pied Pipers of Harlow’, celebrating musical life of Harlow. In Scotland more recently we have the experience of Big Noise Scotland where music is used to motivate and involve young people, originally in Stirling and now rolled out in different parts of Scotland, showing that music can help change the culture of a community.

 Since I moved back to Scotland in 1999 I have been further educated in the world of string quartets by the  Edinburgh Quartet, although sadly, since moving their base to Stirling University they don’t perform as often in Edinburgh as before.  So there is room for a new string quartet in Scotland and after my first concert with the Kromatik Quartet I can confidently say that they are well-placed to become an important part of Scotland’s musical culture. Any doubts about the new quartet understanding each other were quickly dispelled in the first work, Schubert’s short but exquisite Quartettsatz, the first movement of his unfinished 12th Quartet. It is a gem and the Kromatik played it beautifully and their interaction and harmony was perfect, little looks, smiles and nods showed that they may be a new quartet but they know each other very well and make their own ‘Equal Music’! This was confirmed at greater length in their second work, Beethoven’s String Quartet No2, which was actually his third quartet and published in 1801. It is a very light and joyful quartet compared to the much darker late quartets; indeed some critics suggests it is heavily influenced by Haydn who was one of his teachers or indeed Mozart who pre-dated Beethoven. Again it was beautifully played and showed great harmony amongst the quartet.

The final work was one of my favourites of all time, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, written in 1789 for the clarinettist Anton Stadler (and often known as the Stadler Quintet). It is one of Mozart’s greatest works and we were very lucky to have a fine young clarinet player, Sally Day, playing it with the quartet. Sally is a local having been educated at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh before training at the Guildhall School of Music in London. Sally has made a name for herself as an orchestral player with BBC Scottish, the RSNO, Scottish Opera and is a member of the Scottish Clarinet Quartet. She is also interested in jazz and has played klezmer at the Glastonbury Festival. Sally made the Mozart quintet sing and again was in perfect harmony with the Kromatik. Fittingly this was the founding concert of the larger Kromatik Ensemble, another pleasure to anticipate.

So this was a stunning afternoon in North Berwick and made even better by coffee and cakes at the interval and a chance to chat to the musicians and the audience. The quality of the concert was confirmed to me by a very knowledgeable member of the audience who had previously played with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and rated this quartet as excellent. I am not a trained musician but I have been listening to string quartets for over 50 years and I know quality when I hear it. I predict that the Kromatik Quartet and Ensemble will become leading string ensembles not only in Scotland but in Britain. I will also be sending this review to Nicola Benedetti suggesting they should be offered a place in next year’s festival! But make sure they get someone to improve their publicity!