New Zealand String Quartet at Auckland Town Hall

The seemingly limitless invention of Haydn's string quartets has to be heard, or better still, seen to be believed. The New Zealand String Quartet lets us do both in launching its Chamber Music New Zealand concert with the fifth quartet of the composer's Opus 76.

Here are four musicians who never disappoint with their on-stage energy. In Haydn's first movement, this was combined with consummate ensemble as the group showed us how an Allegro could bustle without any sacrifice of grace.

The way in which Helene Pohl lingered over the occasional phrase was subtle and appreciated. She continued to do so in the richly toned Largo.

Intonation was slightly frayed in the unisons of the Minuet but the group took to Haydn's earthy Finale with a renewed vigour. With music like this, the first Womad festival could well have been staged in the grounds of Eisenstadt in 1797.

The stage had been set for George Crumb's Black Angels and, for just over 20 minutes, we were transported into the American composer's nightmare world.

Telling touches were visual (red rather than clear water in the crystal glasses) and musical (the eerie introduction of Schubert's Death and the Maiden).

The odd bump of a contact mike could hardly have been avoided when this

score was being delivered as if lives depended on it.

Listening and watching as searing walls of sound swept around the Town Hall, one appreciated the irony of such huge sonorities being created by such a small group; a parallel, perhaps, for the

power of the humblest protest in the political arena.

After interval, the mood changed to one of thanksgiving, with Beethoven's Opus 132. Again, the evocation of colour was most striking.

The chordal writing, in the opening bars and in the great hymn of the third movement, had just the right tremulous intensity. This interpretation has grown since the quartet played it as part of its 2000 Beethoven cycle.