The St Lawrence String Quartet at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The St Lawrence String Quartet opened Chamber Music New Zealand's 2003 season with a vigorously delivered programme of Mozart, Golijov and Tchaikovsky.

Mozart's E flat Quartet of K 428 is arguably the finest of the composer's 1785 Haydn Quartets and the Canadians' interpretation was a singular one.

Classical euphony was not a high priority, although there was no questioning the vitality and alertness of the ensemble or their attention to the quality of the sound.

The flaws were minor but irritating. The opening Allegro became diffuse at times through eccentric phrasing and rubato, and, although Roger Smith's excellent programme notes mentioned a whiff of Tristan in the slow movement, did this really sanction all those portamenti - a device much more appropriate in their soul-quenching encore of Tchaikovsky's Andante cantabile?

The centrepiece was Osvaldo Golijov's Yiddishbbuk and first violinist Geoff Nuttall offered us a "roadmap", warning it might "hit hard if you're not ready for it".

Exciting on disc, this was almost unbearably thrilling in the flesh. It ranged from the intensely physical (one could have believed that electric shocks were being channelled through the violins' chairs in the first section) to the subtlest of whispers (the Jewish melodic traceries in the sul ponticello passages, the technique having been obligingly demonstrated by Nuttall).

In the second movement, dark, mysterious chords seemed to have an ominous, almost tangible presence.

The final work was Tchaikovsky's Third Quartet. Nuttall acted as apologist - Tchaikovsky had a "bum rap" from the musical establishment and they were going to put it right, although a jokey tag was inevitable: "as this is a long voyage you've got to pack for a month".

On the group's CD of the work, the 17 minutes of the first movement has its longeurs; live, 17 seemed like seven. On disc, the work seems to cry out for an orchestra; in concert, this was never an issue. From thunderous pizzicati to the raw, suppressed emotions of the slow movement, to the balletic formalities of the Finale, this was world-class fare.