The Como String Quartet was a group of musicians who performed a comedic classical act in Australia and Europe during the late 1980s.
Self described as "a string quartet with five members" who "play piano concertos without a piano," the group consisted of Hung Le, George Vi, Peter Bucknell, Glen Nicholls, and Peter O'Reilly. Formed during their time at the Victorian College of the Arts, the Como String Quartet played local pubs before touring the festival circuit and staging their own comedy shows.[1]
In 1989, the group appeared in the Ghost of Faffner Hall episode "The Power of Music" as the in-house entertainment at the Café de Surprise Musicale, a restaurant that lets you choose your own soundscape depending on how you feel. Member Hung Le plays the maître d' while the other four perform as the quartet for The Wild Impresario, who has requested a table for him and the woman of his dreams.
They start with the second movement, "Andante cantabile," from the String Quartet in F major ("Serenade") Op. 3 No. 5 attributed to Franz Joseph Haydn and Roman Hoffstetter. Shifting to something more exotic, they play "Csárdás (Gypsy Dance)" by Vittorio Monti, followed by a hoedown, then finish up with the Neapolitan folk song "O mamma, mamma cara" (arranged for violin as "The Carnival of Venice" by Niccolò Paganini).
Sources[]
- ↑ The Age Melbourne Australia "Edinburgh, all buses and bums" by Neil Jillett, August 27, 1988