Tokyo String Quartet's final Auckland concert drew a large, loyal audience to the Town Hall. The reward was superlative chamber music of a quality rarely savoured in our part of the world.
They set off with Mozart's Hoffmeister Quartet, their very evident affection for the work never compromising its essentially classical poise and structure.
The great violinist Jascha Heifetz once commented that Mozart's music should sound direct, the way a child is. The Tokyo players caught just this in an Allegro that glowed with a sense of discovery. Exquisitely nuanced phrasing was balanced with blushes of rubato and trimmings of a not-too-serious march.
The potent contribution of veterans Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura was evident from the start, their inner voices offering ballast and the occasional wry aside for the more theatrical first violin and cello of Martin Beaver and Clive Greensmith.
