Quartet in F - Ravel

Quartet in G Op 77 No 2 - Haydn

Quartet in A minor Op 51 No 2 - Brahms

It has become commonplace to describe young musicians in terms of their apparent maturity. No such temptation was provoked by the playing of the Aviv String Quartet on Tuesday. This Israeli group is a young ensemble and one that sounds youthful, too.

It's not that, like many a young violinist or pianist, say, they are obsessed with showing off their technical prowess. But the sense they create of four players enjoying their individual expressive roles is achieved sometimes at the expense of the balance of the enterprise as a whole.

The strength of the Aviv's playing is the responsiveness of the leader, Sergei Ostrovsky. His colleagues are more inclined to highlight their expressive moments by raising the volume. He draws attention to himself soft-spokenly, by the quality of his discourse

There was a tendency in the opening performance of Ravel's Quartet In F for secondary voices to speak too loudly and create an impression of textural busyness, or even clutter, that seemed alien to the composer's conception. Tempo and rubato were always well controlled, making the occasional moment of emotionally overdone portamento stand out even more.

Haydn's last completed quartet, Opus 77 No 2, and the second of Brahms's small output of quartets were handled in a manner altogether more robust. It was a nice gesture to place the Haydn after the Ravel, making the welcome point that Haydn deserves better than permanent relegation to the role of warming up an audience for works by later composers. With one of the most mysteriously moving of slow movements at its heart, Haydn's late quartet fulfilled the weightier role that the young Israelis allotted it.