Italian Serenade - Wolf
Five Movements for String Quartet Op 5 - Webern
Quartet in C minor Op 51 No 1 - Brahms
Thirty-five years and a musical revolution separate the earliest work on this programme, the Brahms, from the latest, Webern's 1909 miniatures. Webern's Five Movements play for just 10 minutes together but in terms of emotional range and depth each is an expressionist drama in itself.
The Hugo Wolf Quartet of Vienna is clearly worthy of the name (although unfortunately the Wolf item didn't quite recover its initial insouciance following a technical mishap - a broken string).
They conveyed the full range of expression implicit in Webern's compressed, wispy gestures as only a first-rate quartet can, without relying on the backward-looking, nostalgic elements of this particular work for effect.
We should be grateful for this all-too-rare chance to hear a live performance of a work which remains, in spite of the vagaries of fashion, one of the formative works of 20th century music.
The Brahms quartet has been described as one of his toughest and most cerebral works, but the Hugo Wolf Quartet realises that it is also one of his most deeply-felt and intense.