Classical review: 'Jewels' on show fail to dazzle for quartet

Four months ago, the New Zealand String Quartet enthralled a town hall audience playing Mozart and Brahms quintets with Canadian clarinetist James Campbell.

On Friday, the first instalment of the group's Salon series, presented to a much smaller gathering at Q Theatre, proved problematic.

On the third stop of a 10-gig tour embracing house concerts in Featherston and cafe calls in the capital, the NZSQ offered a potpourri of short pieces ("standalone favourites") and two complete works by Mozart and Schubert.

The format of it all was a tad earnest. Leader Helene Pohl promised "jewels of the chamber music repertoire and our thoughts and ideas about them". However, there were more semi-precious than precious gems here, and pieces like Tchaikovsky's Andante cantabile and a Shostakovich Polka did not bring forth any searching revelations.

The best moments were Rolf Gjelsten's yearning cello solo in Chopin's Etude Op 25 No7, and the vibrant emotionalism of that infallible charmer, Puccini's Crisantemi.

C Major Quartet K157 by the 16-year-old Mozart needed more persuasive nuancing; Pohl talked of the influence of Bach and "a good dose of teenage angst" in its Andante but these did not eventuate in either the music or the performance.

In the second half, we were given another score by a 16-year-old, Schubert's E Flat Major Quartet D 87. This was far from first-grade Schubert, although the NZSQ revelled in the knife-edge textures of the scherzo. But was its Finale really as witty and capricious as the players' constant conspiratorial glances and smiles suggested?

Reviewing the NZSQ's earlier May concert, I suggested that a short jazzy piece by the young New Zealander Natalie Hunt deserved a special place in the group's encore bag.

Hunt's Data Entry Groove was just that, and much appreciated. Gjelsten funked it up in a pizzicato "bass" solo and the musician's theatrical antics drew the sort of laughter that accompanied Earnest, Last Tapes' gender-bending reworking of Oscar Wilde, one floor above in the Loft, just a few nights previously.

Classical review
What: New Zealand String Quartet
Where: Q Theatre
When: Friday.