KEY POINTS:
The intent of the New Zealand String Quartet's concert was clear from its title: Music to Delight.
The offerings were on the easy-going side. Finger food and wine were available (which made for an unexpected and unfortunate percussive moment during Mozart, when a wine-glass toppled on the hard wooden floor), and the modestly sized hall lent the evening a certain intimacy.
Gillian Ansell introduced Bach's Air on the G string and had to poise mid-speech as latecomers clattered into the hall - an unsettling launch that may have had something to do with the patches of strained intonation that ensued.
Two of Mendelssohn's very last pieces - the Theme and Variations and Scherzo from Opus 81 - were touched by some of the asperity that bothered in the Bach, but there was also bloom when Ansell's lustrous viola set off the first variation. The Scherzo was delightfully and irrepressibly spry.
Balakirev's arrangement of Chopin's C sharp minor Etude was described as one of the rare times that cellist Rolf Gjelsten has more than four bars of solo. Not true, of course, but this salon curiosity saw the cellist at his sensitive best, his colleagues enjoying laying on the lushness around him.
Gareth Farr took us to interval with his bright and breezy Mondo Rondo, the full-on energy of which would not dissipate until the musicians had given us the wildest of whirls in the tough turns and segues of the composer's Mambo Rambo.
Mozart's Clarinet Quintet occupied the second half of the programme. Buoyant and serene by turns, this was a showcase for Philip Green, whose clarinet almost basked in the score's shifting tone colours. From his first phrase, he ever so stylishly flaunted the considerable range of his instrument.
