The Jerusalem Quartet at Auckland Town Hall

How clever of the Jerusalem Quartet to launch their Saturday night concert with Shostakovich's Sixth String Quartet, a work which so surreptitiously toys with its audience's expectations.

The blithe dance, set off by Amichai Grosz' full-toned viola, turned darker and darker until the four players revelled in the wall of sound created by their wild double-stopped chords.

New colours were admitted as the work progressed. In the second movement, one was bewitched by the lower strings waltzing in unison under chromatic zephyrs in the violins, chilled by Alexander Pavlovsky's eerie tone in the upper register.

Shostakovich's volatile harmonies proved no worry to these players, who responded with warmth, richness and spot-on intonation, even allowing themselves a ghost of a smile at one of the stauncher moments in the Finale.

When I spoke with cellist Kyril Zlotnikov a few weeks ago, he mentioned how deftly Beethoven's Opus 18 No 6 slotted in between the two Shostakovich quartets.

Certainly, the bustle and drive of its opening Allegro was a portent of a Shostakovich Allegro molto yet to come.

Confident in their ensemble, the four young men clearly enjoyed the intricate dynamics of this movement's second theme, as they did the very physical shifts between Beethoven's melancholic snatches of Adagio and the hurtling dance of its Finale.

Shostakovich's Eighth is perhaps the most popular of his 15 quartets. Few pieces express so potently that mix of sadness and rage provoked by the inhumanity and stupidity of man. Its inspirations are complex, partly growing from the composer's shock at the devastated city of Dresden, but also partially a contemplation of his own anguished career.

The Jerusalem players gave it a sense of an inevitable journey, from the organ-like sonorities of the opening Largo. They unleashed the furies of the Allegro molto without holding back and offset this with the wry waltz of the following movement.

The final two slow movements were a hushed affirmation, occasioning 20 seconds of silence before tumultuous applause broke out.

There was a welcome inevitability, too, in the encore, an intense, heart-rending rendition of Shostakovich's 1931 Elegy.