wed 13/11/2024

Tetzlaff Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall | reviews, news & interviews

Tetzlaff Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Tetzlaff Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Strange refinement, culminating in an overshadowed Sibelius masterpiece

Strange meeting: Viola-player Hanna Weinmeister, violinists Elisabeth Kufferath and Christian Tetzlaff, and cellist Tanja TetzlaffAlexandra Vosding

Their oaky, cultured and selectively scary-wild playing seemed to cast long autumn shadows over a sparse but intent audience. This is the kind of rare programme top violinist Christian Tetzlaff, his cellist sister Tanja and friends like to work on when they get time to play together. There was Haydn for starters, but not the kind of jolly curtainraiser we're usually given; Dvořák, but not the blithe American; and Sibelius's Voces Intimae, the only great quartet of the 20th century yet to be widely acclaimed as such, with strange, authentic ideas in every bar and a slow movement to match any in Beethoven's late masterpieces.

Their oaky, cultured and selectively scary-wild playing seemed to cast long autumn shadows over a sparse but intent audience. This is the kind of rare programme top violinist Christian Tetzlaff, his cellist sister Tanja and friends like to work on when they get time to play together. There was Haydn for starters, but not the kind of jolly curtainraiser we're usually given; Dvořák, but not the blithe American; and Sibelius's Voces Intimae, the only great quartet of the 20th century yet to be widely acclaimed as such, with strange, authentic ideas in every bar and a slow movement to match any in Beethoven's late masterpieces.

Above all it was the Tetzlaffs' resonant, golden sound and near-perfect intonation which guided us through the labyrinth

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