ARCADIA STRING QUARTET - ARTWORK NEEDS TO BE REDESIGNED

Playing in Cairns Church at the Milngavie Music Club, Milngavie (Glasgow) last night were a wonderful quartet from Romania. They are currently on tour in the UK.  Their website is here.

I bought their CD at the end of their quite wonderful concert of chamber music: Beethoven, Janáček and Debussy. (This is my scan of it.)

It was like hearing music played from another era where graciousness and elegance were evident in the chambers and salons of the patrons of the arts.  They played beautifully (winners of recent competitions so it stands to reason), and looked beautiful as they smiled, and established eye contact for starts and pauses. Being a young group they brought verve and pizzazz to their playing while being polished and restrained at the same time. They come from a culture that values music and it shows... e.g. all school children learn about their country's music from an early age.

The first violinist, Ana Törö, wore a garnet red gown which highlighted her figure, skin tones, hair colouring and instrument in the soft light of the church.  The men wore black with garnet red bow ties.  As a group they were a joy both to the eye and the ear.

Flowers were at the front and candles were lit at the side of the church which is carpeted in red with red chairs (the pews having been taken out to make the space more versitile.)

So why am I going on about them in this way?  Because I feel they are being very badly served by their marketing people. Their website shows photos taken of them in some grungy location on a wet day.  In all of the photoshoots these 4 talented people are wearing .... it does them no justice.  Is this supposed to be art? Sophisticiation?

To help things along I have taken the liberty of doctoring the CD cover image.    

I have used a photo of flowers that were in the church (about a month ago) which were on on display in the same  location as they played last night.  At least this latest CD cover  has something other than a disused factory, thankfully, but it's only a slight improvement in that they look totally washed out ... which they certainly are not!

 

Photoshop to the rescue!  

 I rest my case...