Ysaye Quartet at the Auckland Town Hall

By HEATH LEES

Chamber Music New Zealand has brought us a fine trio of quartets this year - the Endellion and Jerusalem and then, on Monday night, the Ysaye.

Like the other two, the Ysaye have perfect ensemble skills, a profound understanding of the music and a gift for communicating it.

If there is something extra, it must be in the way they can instantly immerse us all in the musical experience they create. It is not that they simply play the music but that they fuse themselves into a single, multi-levelled instrument through which the music comes alive.

Take the magical opening of the Haydn "Sunrise" quartet, which started with the lower strings breathing into the soft yet vibrant, B-flat chord, while the first violin soared aloft as though mistaking Haydn's "Sunrise" for his "Lark".

After a delicately expressive slow movement with some ravishing pianissimi, there was a graceful, slightly folksy minuet, and then a loping finale which increased in tempo and intensity to break through the finishing line with an unbelievable burst of speed.

Ubiquitous Gallic charm meant that the Shostakovich "War" quartet that followed was a little restrained in the more violent parts, such as the central, "bombing raid" movement.

But this was offset by the deep sense of elegy that shone through the outer movements, while the tawdry little waltz tune that Shostakovich teases out of the initials of his name was for once deprived of its usual grotesque appearance in favour of subtle irony, and a ballet-like presentation.

Puccini's Crisantemi is "grave" music in every way (chrysanthemums are used to decorate Italian graves) and its funereal tribute to the Prince of Savoy had some nobility of tone, despite Puccini's occasionally tired chromatic slithers and contrived cadences.

A curiosity, really, but it formed a totally contrasting prelude to the Ravel quartet, in which the Ysaye was unquestionably in its element.

From first note to last, there was a delicious feeling that the iridescent music never touched the ground but hovered and darted, light as air.