Quartet in G K387 - Mozart
Quartet No 10 - Shostakovich
Quartet in A flat Op 105. - Dvorak
The Sine Nomine String Quartet's concert at the Royal Hospital Donnybrook on Sunday night had all the certainty one would hope for from musicians who have worked together for 17 years. The style of playing was always accomplished and distinctive, though it was not equally effective in each piece on the programme.
The muscular approach to Mozart's Quartet in G K387 suggested four individuals in agreement, accommodating one another rather than submerging their individuality under a group identity. Phrasing, accents and dynamics were pronounced and every discourse was projected. The result was unusually intense, but this piece can take that.
In the Romantic idiom of Dvorak's Quartet in A flat Op. 105 all these features were amplified. The mastery of tone and the rhythmic panache were admirable. But everything felt over-stressed, as if more was being squeezed out of this music than it can readily bear.
It was in the calculated seriousness of Shostakovich's Quartet No. 10, from 1964, that these Swiss musicians achieved their most complete and convincing match between performance and compositional styles. There it felt as if every gesture, every detail was counting just as much as it should. It was the third movement in particular - the way the variations on the opening passacaglia theme unfolded - that showed a fine mix of sympathetic imagination and of insight into the composer's thoughts.
