Review by Neil Davidson

Quartetto Noûs had already played five small venues around the (rural) corners of Scotland before arriving at Gairloch Community Hall on Saturday 9th November. This was their last Scottish concert before returning to Italy and it glowed with end of tour fire.

The quality of the playing was outrageously good, so much better than it needed to be. They didn’t project shiny perfection; rather the deep musicality and supple cohesion of the quartet shone through in the ways they pulled the tempo around, nudged phrasing to reveal fresh but still grounded nuances: this was wildly good.

Starting the programme with Haydn (more or less the creator of string quartet music as a form) might seem routine but the op 64 no 2 quartet is fairly atypical in its thwarting of expectations; it gets you listening for the unexpected rather than the predictable (which classical period stuff tends to do). The effect was to raise the bar from the outset: transparent sound with playful and dynamic interplay between voices.

Classical music performance can come closest to the intimate social vibe of traditional music where it scales down to the level of chamber music. The Czech folk elements in Dvořák’s op 51 opened up a lyrical warmth in Quartetto Noûs' playing.

The weight and resonant cohesion in their performance of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet was devastating. Black Sabbath in their prime would have a hard time achieving that heavy rhythmic fluidity and precision, sustaining that emotional line through the pieces juxtapositions and contrasts. (I very much enjoy hearing a hushed stupefaction play across an audience between movements and the performance of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden delivered this three times - well done everyone).

Thankfully, recordings of performances like this are rare. The programming and playing here made the concert properly eventful: there was so much to listen to which was down to their being here (no gauzy halo to the acoustic in Gairloch Community Hall) and how the programme was arranged to foreground musicality and listening.

Works played:

Haydn - String Quartet in B minor Op. 64 No. 2

Dvorak - String Quartet in E-flat major No. 10 Op. 51

Schubert - String Quartet in D minor D810 "Death and the Maiden"

Alberto Franchin (second violin) Sara Dambruoso (viola) Ricardo Baldizzi (cello) Ekaterina Gyorik (first violin).