Concert Review: Brentano String Quartet

Brentano String Quartet. Photo / Supplied

Tuesday's concert by the Brentano String Quartet made it clear that four years is too long a wait for a return visit.

The Americans had given us one of the highlights of Chamber Music New Zealand's 2007 season, playing Haydn, Monteverdi and Bartok, as well as treating us to a preview of a newly commissioned work by Gabriela Lena Frank.

This time around, Mozart's D minor Quartet K421 set the evening off, revealing just how in tune the group is with the emotional intimacy of this score.

These musicians understand the mysteries of Mozartian light and shade, the sigh of falling cadences within the cut and thrust of musical dialogue. The finely tuned teamwork of Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin's violins in Mozart's Andante was inspirational; for the final movement, each variation found its own voice and character.

The contemporary offering was Stephen Hartke's Night Songs for a Desert Flower. Cellist Nina Lee responded passionately to Hartke's well-tempered lyricism and the opening Madrigal did justice to both the grazioso and amoroso that its composer had stipulated.

A Renaissance bracket was delivered without vibrato and with a real sense of the material journeying around from player to player. Introspective and slightly mournful pieces by William Byrd sat alongside vigorous Fantasias by Orlando Gibbons, wending their way from style to style.

Serena Canin had explained to me just how hard the Brentanos work to connect the often disjunct threads of the late Beethoven quartets; their success at doing just this was apparent when they played the composer's
F major Quartet Opus 135.

The first movement, with its myriad fluctuations of tempo and dynamics, combined precision and poetry. The Scherzo took wildness to the very brink of being possessed while the Lento that followed caught the soul of the piece in rich, glowing harmonies.

This was another Chamber Music New Zealand presentation that deserved a much larger audience than it received. But all is not lost. Thanks to Radio New Zealand Concert, next Monday Aucklanders can hear a broadcast of the Brentano's Wellington concert, with a repeat playing of the Hartke and other works by Haydn and Beethoven.

What: Brentano String Quartet
Where: Auckland Town Hall