Quartet turns on a class performance

New Zealand String Quartet and Diedre Irons (piano)
The Great Romantics: second concert. String Quartet Op 44 No 2 (Mendelssohn); String Quartet Op 41 No 2 (Schumann)
Piano Quartet Op 25 (Brahms)
Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

The New Zealand String Quartet is party way through a two-concert series in Auckland, Wellington and Hawke’s Bay. Though the other two centres hear them once they have been played twice in Wellington, partly because a smaller venue was chosen.

The recipe, the same: two string quartets one piano quartet. This Mendelssohn was not quite the searing piece we heard in the first programme, but the opening is febrile, nervous in character and the performance began with the player’s arresting attack, expressiveness and their usual symmetry and balance.

Rolf Gjelsten’s cello turned his arpeggios into exquisite music; Helene Pohl’s violin is singing with more lyricism and freedom than ever. Its first and third movements are the best: elsewhere, more normal Mendelssohn; busy, cheerful, well made, often interesting. The performance gave it real class.

The Schumann quartet has few resemblances to the Schumann of either songs or piano music. From the slow movement and its variations, the players illuminated Schumann’s self-effacing material and made a highly persuasive case for this little-played work.

In some ways it was a pity that after the interval the limelight fell on the sublime G minor piano quartet by Brahms, rather eclipsing the beauties of the first half. In itself the Brahms is such a glorious, richly melodic and ever surprising work; in the hands of Diedre Irons and the three string players (Douglas Beilman assumed leadership), it was fresh, sparkling: a revelation, suggesting that the players had just discovered it and were enraptured by it, yet had gained remarkable mastery.

A month ago we were astonished at Irons’ playing of the Dvorak piano quartet with the Leopold Trio. Again, the polish, joy and soulfulness, and unanimity of feeling: not just hitting the notes together, but in the breathtaking sensitivity of dynamics and rubato that allowed piano and strings to sing to each other.

The Andante was so exquisitely paced that I wanted the concert to stop there. But the boisterous gypsy finale that followed utterly undid me and the full-house audience, which applauded unrestrainedly.