The Herald, 05/09/08, Keith Bruce, Arts Editor
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Mendelssohn Octet with the Edinburgh Quartet, Merchants House
 

It is one of the best known and best loved pieces in the chamber repertoire with countless recordings, but there is also a great visual pleasure to be had from a performance of Mendelssohn's Octet.
The precocious 16-year-old composer distributed melodies and counterpoint in ever-changing combinations among the double quartet with meaty unison passages and filigree solo figures in a great feast of teenage showing-off, and it is fun to be able to watch the themes swap hands around the semi-circle like ping pong, or chess.
Just as they had done in the West End Festival with the RSNO-derived Fejes Quartet, the young musicians of the Alba kept the Edinburgers on their mettle, with a constant awareness and edge to their playing that ensured this would never be a run-of-the-mill performance.
Its only weak point, in fact, was at the very start, when ambiguous cueing by Edinburgh Quartet leader Tristan Gurney produced a slight fluff on the gentle fade-in. Two bars later, however, the whole ensemble was in step, if perhaps a little too full-on for the next couple of minutes in compensation.
The ensemble sound was a tribute to the adaptability of all eight players and, by the finale, Alba cellist Robert Anderson was confidently leading the piece to a beautifully-paced and dynamic conclusion.
A flying start to the new season of fortnightly lunchtime recitals from Westbourne Music was rewarded with a very good attendance, particularly when the concert was up against a free performance by the RSNO up the road at exactly the same time. Another young group, the new Scottish Reed Trio, gives its debut recital on September 18.

 
 
 
The Herald, 25/06/08, Michael Tumelty
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West End Festival with the Fejes Quartet, Oran Mor
 

There are many reasons for allocating five stars to a performance. Perfection? It doesn't exist. Striving towards it? That's a different matter. Coherence, structuring, intelligence, virtuosity, profundity, chemistry, the magic of the moment? All these can be candidates. But there's another: sheer bloody-minded audacity. And any music critic who could resist giving five stars for the West End Festival's promotion of Mendelssohn's Octet on Monday night has water in his veins and stone in his heart.
Years ago I was present at an incandescent performance of the teenage Mendelssohn's staggeringly precocious composition of genius, the Octet. It was an SCO performance and I reckoned that day I would never hear anything as exciting.
On Monday I did, and it featured a combination of musicians that could have been a recipe for disaster. The young Alba Quartet, all recent graduates, combined with the seasoned professionals of the Fejes Quartet, all RSNO players, in a mind-blowing performance of the Octet that, frankly, should never have come off.
At the speed these players took the Octet, the risks incurred were huge. At this pace fingers can slip, notes can skite off the top, intonation can throw wobblies, articulation can gasp trying to keep up with itself, gears can crunch, the music can teeter precariously on two wheels and, indeed, bits of instruments can fall off at the sheer ferocity and velocity.
All of these thing happened during an explosive performance, and none of them mattered because they didn't inhibit the exhilaration of a performance that sounded like a jam session, had the spontaneity of an improvisation, and exuded in every bar a single philosophy: let's go for it.