Playing as though it has nothing to prove

The New Zealand String Quartet plays as though it has nothing to prove. These musicians – Helen Pohl and Douglas Beilman, violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello – take sensible tempos, let the music breath naturally and rely on traditional musicianship rather than high-powered virtuosity. Their concert on Sunday afternoon at the National Academy of Sciences was a welcome respite from the thrusting flamboyance and hyperactivity that some quartets affect.

The New Zealanders gave Debussy’s G Minor String Quartet a dreamy, shivering elegance without loosing rhythmic vigor or flow. This was not an opulent reading, but ample tonal polish made the collective sound highly attractive, and the recastings of the cyclical theme were given just enough urgency to bind this piece together.

John Psathas’s Abhisheka uses microtones – various intervals that lie between the notes we commonly hear – that in this piece gently lap at the ear and cause subtle aural adjustments, The piece is about texture and stasis, and was nicely done.

Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 18, No. 4, got a comfortable reading that in its lack of idiosyncrasy had room for little interpretive touches central to Beethoven’s text, and the finale built inexorably. In Schumann’s wonderful Quartet in A, the players clearly identified with the composer’s romantically effusive style and pushed it to the limit – risking an occasional raw intonation – without exaggeration or artifice.