Brahms and Webern: Artemis String Quartet (touring for Musica Viva), City Recital Hall Angel Place, Sydney, 17.03.2007 (TP)

Brahms, String Quartet in A Minor Op.51 No.2; String Quartet in B flat major Op.67

Webern, Five Movements for string quartet, Op.5

The Artemis Quartet, from Berlin, the launched a promising season for Musica Viva with two programmes focussed on the musical life of Vienna over the centuries.  The first programme featured music by Beethoven, Schönberg and Webern.  This programme, the second, opened and closed with Brahms, with a little Webern at its heart.

The evening began with an amiable account Brahms' third and final quartet.  The combined technique of the Artemis Quartet was formidable.  Throughout, their ensemble was impeccable and – apart from a couple of minor tuning and balance issues involving the first violin - their performance was immaculate.  The cellist, Eckart Runge, must come in for special praise.  His responses to his colleagues were precise and genuine, and his tone light and sweet – caramel rather than chocolate.  Tempi were flowing, but never over quick, and first violinist in particular fired off rapid passages without difficulty.  The interplay between the four voices was warmly communicative.

For all of this, though, the Artemis Quartet's account of Brahms' Op.67 was missing something, and it was their performance of Brahms' Op. 51 No.2 after interval that showed what that missing ingredient was.  Contrast.  For all of the technical ease with which they had despatched the B flat major quartet, it is such smiling music that under their bows one sunny moment simply slipped into the next, without generating or resolving any tension, and without any real fantasy in execution.

Their performance of the A Minor quartet did not have any such flaws.  As if galvanised by the tangy minor mode of this piece, they launched into the first movement at a quick tempo and with sure attack.  They were brooding and gentle by turns in the second movement, shading the changing keys as shifting moods.  The third movement was marked by sharp dynamic contrasts, and the final movement was exciting, played with rhythmic snap and vitality.

Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet also showed the Artemis Quartet to its best advantage.  Mentored by the Alban Berg Quartet, the Artemis Quartet has a real affinity for the more “modern” quartet repertoire.  Although Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet was written more than a century ago, its pithy construction, ambiguity and emotional nakedness make it difficult music to play and to hear even now.  The Artemis Quartet, however, brushed these difficulties aside in an exploratory but intimate performance.

The ovation that greeted the Artemis Quartet at the end of the Brahms A Minor Quartet justified an encore, and the musicians obliged with a sincere account of the slow movement of Brahms' other Op.51 string quartet, the C Minor.  After so much Brahms, and particularly after such an excellent performance of the A Minor quartet, it seemed just a little too much of a good thing.  A contrasting encore, perhaps from the 20^th century repertoire that the Artemis play so well, would have been more apt. 

Tim Perry

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