Jerusalem Quartet at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The Jerusalem Quartet provided an inspirational launch for Chamber Music New Zealand's 2004 season on Wednesday night. Indeed, for two magical hours, one might have been in Carnegie or Wigmore Hall.

Few groups have a leader as sweet-toned as Alexander Pavlovsky and the arching flourishes that open Beethoven's early G major Quartet gave ample opportunity for him to display that rare virtue.

Behind him, his colleagues offered the sort of ace ensemble that caught every inflection intended. The slow movement was one long and lovely sigh while the fleet-fingered Scherzo fluttered like a feather on the breeze.

For many, Shostakovich's Fourth Quartet would have been the highlight of the evening. An elusive score this, making its point rather cagily, as might be expected from a composer who, in 1949, was smarting from yet another round of Soviet restrictions. The Jerusalem players caught the raw, bucolic underlay of the first movement, and brought intensity to the nostalgia of the following Andantino.

For me, the miracle was the third movement, in which cellist Kyril Zlotnikov sparked off some remarkable teamwork, particularly when he and violist Amihai Grosz were in telling unison with Pavlovsky.

After interval, Shostakovich's bitter-sweet music was followed by the sweet sorbet of a Rachmaninov Romance, delivered as if the musicians were neither afraid of extra musical calories themselves, nor of tempting the audience with them.

Finally, Dvorak's American Quartet proved a solid main course. Although I was disappointed when they sailed through the Exposition repeat, the first movement glowed with all the colours that the composer must have seen in the woods of Spillville, Iowa.

It was here that Dvorak heard the song of scarlet tanager that appears in the third movement (again, the eloquent Pavlovsky) and this Molto vivace was a tingling delight.

Much was made of dramatic key shifts in the Finale, yet the players pulled back, as one, to invest the slower passages with a touch of the elegiac.

There was one encore. A dizzying spin through the Finale of Haydn's Lark Quartet was testament to the musicians' youth and chutzpah as well as being a reminder that their new Haydn CD is a temptation that is well worth surrendering to.