The Belcea Quartet at the Town Hall

By HEATH LEES

Like police officers, string quartets get younger all the time. Perhaps the two women and two men who made up the Belcea Quartet at Monday's concert are not quite so tender in years as the all-male Jerusalem Quartet lads were last year, but they're close.

And they do play well. For openers, the capricious first movement of Haydn's early G-minor quartet op 20 brought alive the musical nuance and detail, though a certain repetitiveness crept into the phrases of the minuet that followed. But this was soon banished by a slow movement that had the most evenly balanced, silky sound you could hope to hear from 16 strings, and the ebullient finale sounded like laughter at times.

For me, the Britten Quartet Number 3 was the quartet's most rewarding item, though not immediately. By the middle movement, the composer's soul seemed to open out in a sad yet peaceful threnody that included fascinating points, smudges and blurs in its pizzicato and glissando touches, before floating upwards to a spine-tingling close.

By contrast, the ending of the whole work (it was really Britten's last composition) faded away in a weary yet curiously dignified trudge, and the final question mark hung with long uncertainty in the air, just as Britten had wanted.

Schubert's late G-major quartet is a big piece and, despite the resilience of youth, the Belcea became tired, and their somewhat silvery sound seemed less amenable to Schubert, who demands more body and soul.

The work was slow to catch alight, with the expansive introduction more an impression of heavy weather than mighty rolling clouds, and the cutting, short-long rhythms were occasionally blunt.

On the other hand, the group has a fabulous kind of shared tremolo - a light, energised, almost synchronised trill procedure that gives the music added brilliance. And the many duos between cello and first violin were hugely enjoyable, like Viennese street-songs tossed from key to key.

Not a great concert, but a good one, from a quartet that's sure to go far.