{TABLE} Quartet in G, Op 77 No 1 .......... Haydn Officium Breve .................... Gvorgy Kurtag Quartet in A minor, Op 132 ........ Beethoven {/TABLE} THIS string quartet is a young group from Budapest on their first Irish visit. Their playing is full of passionate enthusiasm and this helped greatly in putting across Kurtag's Officium Breve.
The 15 sections of this work are very short and the connections between them are no easier to follow than in the Japanese form of linked haiku, where several masters combine and compete in subtlety of allusion. The Auer Quartet made each section and each note sound significant.
This passionate approach made the last movement of Beethoven's Op. 132 most exciting, but in the Adagio, the hymn of thanksgiving in the Lydian mode, the players never quite attained the quiet sublimity that is its most noticeable characteristic.
The Takacs Quartet used to play the chorale theme without any vibrato, reinforcing the impression of a solemn ecclesiastical mode, and the Auer would likewise have done well to have curbed their vibrato in such a movement. Haydn's Op. 77 No. 1 does not aim at such spiritual heights and to it the Auer brought a delightful lightness and energy which illuminated the flow of the music, and the slow movement was more consistently impressive than the Adagio of the Beethoven.
