Takàcs Quartet is one awesome foursome

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Infinitely adaptable, profoundly expressive, the string quartet is the composer’s flexible friend. So why make life difficult by adding a piano? There are, indeed, plenty of piano quintets where the gate-crashing piano disrupts the string players’ delicate synergy. Not, however, in the case of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, at least not in a performance as well judged as this by the Takàcs Quartet with pianist Marc‑André Hamelin.

There were moments when Hamelin’s nervy energy threatened to take over but they were part of the natural ebb and flow between five musicians enjoying each other’s company. The second movement’s funeral march was not over-dramatised but it carried full emotional weight, while the scherzo’s tightly controlled abandon swept all before it.

The rest of the programme was for quartet alone, beginning with Beethoven’s Op 18 No 3, an early work delivered with an irresistible combination of apparent nonchalance and unexaggerated passion.

This year marks the bicentenary of Haydn’s death, so the Takàcs simply had to honour the composer credited with making the string quartet a viable life-form. Haydn’s Op 77 No 2 married easeful grace with rhythmic precision, and where many quartets make the finale seem galumphing, here its wit came across as properly urbane.

As for his last quartet, Op 103, Haydn completed only two movements; the Takàcs made them seem complete unto themselves. This is one awesome foursome.

Takacs Quartet & Marc-Andre Hamelin
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, Waterloo, SE1 8XX