Review: NZ String Quartet at Hopetoun Alpha, St Matthew-in-the City

I went along to the first instalment of Haydn and the String Quartet with some trepidation; the New Zealand String Quartet may have been tempting us with "a unique tribute to Haydn the adventurer" but was I in for adventure, or an earnest night school lecture?

My fears proved groundless. Twenty Haydn movements from Opus 1 to Opus 103 were elegantly punctuated by illuminating comments from the composer, his contemporaries and writers of the time.

We learnt about the choirboy Haydn being tempted to trill with cherries as his reward; and then there was the gothic tale of Brahms looking for inspiration by placing Haydn's skull on his piano.

Early on, violinist Douglas Beilman, entrusted with Haydn's own words, intoned the composer's celebrated claim that living in country isolation forced him to be original. And how original this man was, from his very first Opus 1 Presto to that extraordinary Opus 54 no 2 Adagio with Helene Pohl soaring over her colleagues like a Bellini diva.

By the closing extract, the folkish Finale from Opus 76 no 5, I wondered whether quite enough had been made of the earthy Haydn, the man who may have heard Bartok-style folk music in the Hungarian fields; the same Haydn who made arrangements of more than 400 Scottish folk songs.

Sunday's concert opened with The Lark, otherwise known as Opus 64 no 5. The NZSQ came up with its familiar high-energy performance, relishing the rhythmic swerves of the Allegro and the fugal bustle that erupts in the middle of a closing movement that's eerily close to the famous Sailor's Hornpipe.

Touches of Landler in the Allegro of Opus 74 no 3 had just the right lilt, and the four did their impressive best to be a string orchestra when a wall of tremolo rises out of the Adagio.

After interval, the fifth quartet of Haydn's Opus 20 set was more testing. I would have appreciated a repeat of the middle section of the Moderato, as Haydn stipulates, and greatly missed the syncopating ties that should have been in the Adagio. Even the final Fugue, effectively rendered as a ghostly whisper, seemed a tad rushed.

The Adagio of Opus 77 no 1 showed the players at their most persuasive, especially when Haydn plunges into Beethoven territory with a modulation to D flat major. And it was the sheer good humour of this quartet's finale that provided the perfect signing off for the afternoon; so infectious that some unsettling intonation problems seemed minor blemishes.