Quatuor Ébène

The Ébène Quartet is not just any old quartet. Not only have these four musicians rocketed to a position among the world's best in the classical repertoire, but there also appears to be a revelatory jazz combo lurking within them. In the first of two successive concerts, the ebony foursome bestride three stayers in the quartet field. "One cannot believe one's ears", said Maarten 't Hart about the 'unearthly' dissonance and 'audacious modulation' with which Mozart's epic Nineteenth Quartet begins. Whole theses have been written about the dark twenty-two-bar 'Adagio' preceding the point at which the 'Allegro' breaks through into a radiant C major. 'Rosamunde', for its part, is an eddying stream of brooding emotion. For three movements, Schubert wrestles through melancholy and despair, before celebrating a hard-won triumph in the final 'Allegro moderato'. Tchaikovsky, lastly, exceeds all expectations with his melancholic 'Andante Cantabile', which reduced even the great Leo Tolstoy to tears.