Variety that sets them apart

Many of the string quartets we hear these days play as if they had metronomes attached to their bows. Not only do they have little sense of rhythmic variety, but they fail to recognize the importance of dynamic variety as well. So when a group like the New Zealand String Quartet performs, as it did for the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild on Sunday at Ravenscroft School, it is rewarding to be able to report that there is a group which uses fully these two essential devices of musical expression.

The New Zealand members – Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman (first and second violins), Gillian Ansell (viola) and Rolf Gjelsten (cello) – are all superb instrumentalists. Tonally and technically, they are virtually without flaw. But it is their ability to bring variety to every line and phrase that sets them apart.

The group opened the program with a nostalgic piece titled Abhisheka (Sanskrit for “Initiation”) by John Psathas, a New Zealand composer of Greek origin. The dynamics were basically soft and floating with occasional rapid passages to accent the tranquil lines, and the musicians’ tone was pure and gentle. With its ethereal feeling of remoteness, the piece was a different introduction to a less than standard program.

Then followed a brilliant performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major, Opus 18, No. 1. Here again, the ever-changing dynamics and subtle tempo variations lent interest to the performance of this familiar early classical work. A well-turned phrase and a new way to round off a passage were delightful to hear. And the work’s romantic elements were fully realized.

After intermission, the group presented Featuring Frenzies by New Zealand composer Gareth Farr. As one of the players announced, they felt that the best words to express the essence of the music were “A Drunken Party.” There’s a lot of motioning the piece, but it has its gentler movements and the playing had its quieter sections as well. A performing triumph.

But the most rewarding music was the String Quartet in E Flat Major, Opus 51 by Dvorak, whose power and tenderness as a composer constantly grows on us. Its four movements were delivered with an elegance of performance that was beauty and tenderness personified. The New Zealand’s playing of the Romanza was particularly felicitous, and the Finale was breathtaking in its furious brilliance.

As an encore the group played a string quartet arrangement of George Gershwin’s Prelude for Piano as made by Bielman. (Incidentally, he’s the brother of North Carolina Symphony cellist Elizabeth Beilman).

Another element may account to the fluidity of the New Zealand’s playing. Aside from the cellist, who was seated on a 12-inch high platform, the rest of the players performed standing. Perhaps this physical freedom to move their bodies had something to do with the easy variety of their playing. In any case, it was a rewarding afternoon of superbly performed chamber music.