Freedom and grace from risk-taking Norwegian group

Quartet in A minor Op 13 . . . . . Mendelssohn

Bagatelles Op 9 . . . . .Webern

Slow movement . . . . . Webern

'little sails'. . . . . Deirdre McKay

Quartet No 2 . . . . . Britten

Theertavo String Quartet followed up their Irish dΘbut at the ESB Vogler Spring Festival with a 10-venue tour which reached Dublin last Wednesday.

As their chosen programme of Mendelssohn, Webern, Deirdre McKay and Britten would suggest, their playing style is any thing but staid. They're a risk-taking group, finding fresh responses to every thing they do.

Not everything these Norwegian players essay pays off equally well. The delicacy they brought to much of Mendelssohn's A minor Quartet had a real air of magic about it. But when they pressed for intensity of expression at climaxes, there was an edgy nerviness.

Their placing of the outgoing Slow movement Webern wrote at the age of 21, was a cunning programming decision. And Deirdre McKay's minimalist "little sails", premiΦred at the festival in Sligo, has clearly bedded in from the repeated performances of the tour.

But the true musical climax of the evening was Britten's Second String Quartet, written just after the second World War, but concerned with commemorating the 250th anniversary of the death of Henry Purcell. The Vertavos' freedom and lissom grace made it sound as though the piece might have been specially written for them.