Quartet In D, D94 - Schubert

Quartet No 7 - Salvatore Sciarrino

Quartet In A Minor Op 51 No 2 - Brahms

We like to wonder at the achievements of musical prodigies. But we don't often encounter in concert the symphony that Mozart was writing at the age of eight, the opera that Liszt completed at 14 or the astonishingly accomplished symphony that Saint-Saδns gave us at 15.

Schubert's String Quartet In D, D94 probably dates from 1812, when the composer was 15, and is the seventh quartet he completed. It's not difficult to track down on CD, but in the concert hall it's a rarity. The Prometeo Quartet's performance on Tuesday made clear why.

Even in his teens, Schubert seems to have been able to shape his material in a characteristic fashion, and showed an early fondness for those tonal excursions into strange keys that he was to exploit so successfully. The Prometeo's performance played up turns of phrase and individual gestures that could be made to sound persuasively Schubertian. But the young composer was unable to create a convincing context to contain the ambition of his undertaking.

Salvatore Sciarrino is one of Italy's leading composers. His Seventh Quartet set out to avoid the overtly virtuosic, focusing instead on a virtuosity of gesture. The echoing trails, swells and spirals brought to mind the keening cries of gulls, as if electronically reshaped and processed.

In Brahms's Quartet In A Minor, Op 51 No 2, the young Italian players seemed to force for expressive effects more readily achieved by milder means. The frustration for the listener came from the fact that so much in their playing suggested those milder means were in their grasp.