Concert Review: NZ String Quartet, St Matthew-in-the-City

Gillian Ansell's eloquent viola was the inevitable anchor, inspiring her colleagues to the very finest performance of this visit. Photo / NZ Herald

Last weekend the New Zealand String Quartet coupled the music of Schumann and Shostakovich under the provocative banner of "Romance, Passion, Politics".

It was a good pairing and timely, too, to be reminded of the stature of Schumann's Opus 41 Quartets in his bicentenary year. How effortlessly the NZSQ took the dreamy opening of the German composer's A major work through to the winding waltz, calling on body movements as well as the music itself to reflect the Allegro's rhythmic ploys.

Throughout, the group's customary well-honed teamwork made for an effortlessly spun Adagio molto and perhaps even a touch of tongue-in-cheek playfulness with the Finale's manic dotted rhythms.

Sunday afternoon saw Opus 41 completed and, even if the Scherzo from the F major Quartet suffered from some scuffed intonation, amends were made with a graceful, almost balletic Trio.

The volatility of Schumann's language had been perfectly rendered in the opening Allegro vivace along with the explorative and sometimes dense textures of the Andante as it moved through its variations.

And how could one overlook the A minor Quartet, the first of the set, with the players so obviously enjoying the contrapuntal flourishes of its opening movement as well as attending to the structural demands of a more formal Finale.

Leader Helene Pohl pointed out a revealing connection between the two composers on Sunday afternoon. Schumann, she told us, had the luxury to express thoughts and feelings in words; Shostakovich had to sublimate and encrypt such issues into the very personal pages of his 15 string quartets.

The chosen quartets, written between 1953 and 1970, represented an important period of the Russian composer's life. Opening with the Fifth, the musicians cast a wistful Andante, dazzling in its delivery, between two more extrovert movements.

In the Ninth, there was an ominous darkness in the unruffled waters of its initial Moderato. The NZSQ made the most of the thematic links that Shostakovich had given it; the light satiric thrust of the Andante was appreciated, as was the unsparing journey of the final Allegro.

Sunday's pairing was particularly significant. While the Seventh, written in memory of his late wife, harboured gentler barbs in its outer movements, the Thirteenth, written by a composer struggling with his own illness, dealt out anguish with a steely and gripping persistence.

Gillian Ansell's eloquent viola, by turns forthright and lyrical, was the inevitable anchor, inspiring her colleagues to the very finest performance of this visit.

What: New Zealand String Quartet.

Where: St Matthew-in-the-City, Saturday and Sunday.