Review: Miró Quartet at Alice Tully Hall
By: Brian Wise

The Miró Quartet showed off its ability to balance strong individual voices with an equally compelling ensemble profile on 23 February.  The quartet op. 18 no. 4 was composed by a musician frustrated by his encroaching deafness, and some of this torture is evident in its darkly coloured opening theme that rises from the lowest note of the violin to high in the instrument’s range (finely executed by Daniel Ching).

I missed the night’s final piece, but the op. 135 Quartet was a good place to leave things.  The Miró forged a connection between the first movement’s enigmatic pauses and the cosmic riddle written into the score of the finale (‘Must it be?’).  Each intrusion of that question was rendered with Hamlet-like angst, in contrast to a relatively tame account of the manic scherzo.  The answer came skittering as a propulsive affirmation.

Taken from the May 2010 edition of The Strad Magazine.  For more information on The Strad, please visit www.thestrad.com