Berlin-based Vision is notable on many counts, as this chamber Prom amply demonstrated. They identify as a band as much as conventional quartet, their mission being to find inspiration “outside the classical bubble”, crossing boundaries of genre and mixing jazz, rock, minimalism, funk and fun. They perform from memory and in a first half of quartets by Bloch and Dvořák, the absence of stands and scores made for an appealing directness of communication, with each other as well as the audience.
That air of spontaneity suited Dvořák’s penultimate Quartet, Op 106 in G major, particularly well, underlining the composer’s irrepressible sense of melody and, too, his capacity for moving – almost on the turn of a chord – from bright major mode into dark minor, before re-emerging into sunshine. The vision players embraced the range of emotions – nostalgia, joy and exuberance – with instinctive flair.
Now miked up, their own piece, Copenhagen, with its lively fusion of styles, set up the second half’s fascinating collaboration with the Iranian-Austrian guitarist, Mahan Mirarab. Combining the inflections of Iranian classical music with that of Iranian jazz, and elements of Mirarab’s own composition with improvisation, both structure and freedom were implicit, with the very fluidity of it somehow an extension of the natural flow of Dvořák. In a sequence of three pieces – Chah (Fountain), Rain, and Convalescence, the latter not languid but celebrating recovery – ostensibly disparate talents were melded into a whole, bellies of the instruments used as drums for heightened rhythmic effect.
Mirarab plays a double-necked guitar, effectively two in a single body, one with frets, the other fretless, and it was in the first part of his solo Anar – the Farsi word for pomegranate – that the characteristic microtones of Iranian music carried most clearly, these evocative lines then giving way to a filigree of more virtuosic figurations on the fretted instrument. Elaborate counterpoint in the quintet’s final number, Prelude Abdel and Fuga in Odd brought the performance to a dynamic conclusion.
It felt significant that the Bloch Prélude, B63, which had opened the programme, was based on Jewish melodies, thus allowing these artists – rather in the spirit of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – to make their own statement about the harmony that music can bring.
• Available on BBC Sounds until 14 October. The Proms continue until 14 September
