The Petersen Quartet came with a model of a programme, Mozart and Schumann serving as sturdy bookends around two shorter offerings from the 20th century.
The first phrases of Mozart's G major Quartet K 387 revealed the strengths of the ensemble, with full, rich textures and subtly gauged dynamics.
Conrad
Muck's wasn't the only telling voice; fellow violinist Daniel Bell put just the right strut into the second subject, and Friedemann Weigle's viola was forceful in the bustling Development section.
The finesse with which the Petersens alternated piano and forte, note by note, in the Minuet was awe inspiring, as were their immaculate unisons in the Trio.
If the Andante cantabile impressed through its tonal expansiveness, including one moment in which spring seemed to burst into the most glorious of summers, the inexorable logic of the Finale's fuguing was also effortlessly conveyed.
Peter Sculthorpe's Ninth String Quartet is a concise, atmospheric score, with a colouristic verve that betrays a 70s experimental bent. There is much stillness here, encroached on by stabs of dissonance and the nervous clicking of bows on chinrests. The Petersens allowed neither its brilliant colours to dim nor its eerie harmonies to lose their intensity.
After interval, we had a taste of the music that so worried Hitler in the 30s and 40s. Erwin Schulhoff's Five Pieces are dances on the surface, but all darkness underneath. In a gripping performance, Schulhoff's waltz was from the Vienna of Freud rather than Strauss, while his Serenade was for dark alleys rather than under the shadows of balconies.
There was much to admire in Schumann's First String Quartet, from the cool dialogue of its first pages to the lyricism of its Adagio, particularly from the cello of Henry-David Varema. The vibrant Scherzo was the first taste of the earthiness that would spring to the surface in the final minutes of the quartet, an earthiness that didn't quite excuse some lapses in intonation when the music went chordal.
The slow movement from Dvorak's American Quartet was a popular encore, although after such an invigorating evening something less well-known would have been appreciated.
*What: Petersen Quartet
*Where: Auckland Town Hall
