Performance: The Endellion String Quartet

Auckland Town Hall

Reviewer: Heath Lees

Is it really 18 years since this quartet last played in New Zealand? Since then their concerts and recordings have attracted an increasing stream of glowing reviews and major prizes.

But Wednesday's concert started shakily, with the instruments not too happy about Auckland's hot and humid conditions and the quartet's pinpoint accuracy of intonation slow to appear.

But the rhythmic contours of Haydn's "Emperor" Quartet were nicely handled as the first movement progressed, with the alternating waves of urgency and relaxation being created not so much by altering the tempo but by being specially sensitive to the changing textures.

And the still centrepiece of the slow movement's "Emperor's Hymn" made its dignified way to a final variation that seemed almost transparent.

Transparency of texture was required to the nth degree in Arcadiana by Thomas Ades, one of Britain's younger generation of star composers. With squeaky-high harmonics, ghostly dance-rhythms and near-impossible glissandi, the music gives a harsh but soft-centred picture of dream and reality, while nodding, as though to the gods, to the music of earlier composers such as Mozart and Mahler.

For a couple of years now, the Endellion Quartet has had this work - their own commission - available on CD, but there was clearly nothing to match the excitement of a live performance.

A little more of both colour and excitement wouldn't have gone amiss in the Italian Serenade by Hugo Wolf, whose fondness for vocal music means that his occasional instrumental excursions often go unremarked.

This serenade needs a lot of help in the way of lilt and continuous vitality of tone, and the performance, though often sunlit, was not boisterous or abandoned enough for Wolf's intention.

More convincing playing reappeared in the Janacek's Second Quartet, where the Endellion's marvellous response to nuance and sudden transformation meant that all four sounded like one single, satisfying instrument.