Contempo String Quartet

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Haydn – Quartet in D Op 20 No 4; Mendelssohn – Quartet in E flat Op 44 No 3

Suddenly, with this concert, the calendar of events honouring two of 2009’s big musical bicentenaries is all but complete. It’s been a great year for hearing music by Mendelssohn and Haydn, the one born in February 1809, the other dying a few months later that same year.

The Contempo Quartet – the Romanian quartet currently ensemble-in-residence to Co Galway – confined their Hugh Lane Gallery programme to the two composers. They opened with Haydn’s D major Quartet from his Op. 20 set of six masterpieces, playing with heightened engagement and vivaciously inhabiting every note, every accent, dynamic, and contour. This was especially enjoyable as the melodic line was passed between instruments in the slow movement’s sombre theme and variations, and in the reckless exuberance of their speed in the gypsy-influenced finale.