Music review: Pavel Haas Quartet, Queen's Hall
You could never accuse Prague's Pavel Haas ÂQuartet of stinting on drama. The foursome attacked their richly coloured programme with breathtaking vigour and no less abandon '“ there was a chance the whole thing could have come off the rails, were it not for the group's Âimpeccable control and minute attention to nuance.
Pavel Haas Quartet, Queen’s Hall (*****)
After a deceptively throwaway start, their Shostakovich Seventh Quartet made for an enigmatic, nervy opener, seeming to raise more questions than it answered, and setting a profoundly searching, exploratory tone for the rest of the recital. In response, the Pavel Haas players made a exhilarating journey of their meaty main course, Schubert’s ‘Rosamunde’ Quartet, from introspective melancholy in its opening movement to hard-won freshness in the blithely lyrical finale. Every detail counted, too, in their brooding minuet, its hesitant opening giving way to tellingly ghostly dance gestures.
Ravel’s Quartet made a brisk, sharply characterised conclusion, from deep melancholy in its impassioned opening – made slightly fragmentary, it has to be said, by the players’ microscopic attention to detail – to joyful abandon in its blazing finale.
A nod to their homeland in one of Dvořák’s Cypresses made a restrained, gently radiant encore to what had been a gloriously vivid, captivating recital of exuberant music making.