It was an auspicious local debut the German-based Auryn Quartet made Tuesday at the Museum of Fine Arts - and that despite playing what might be regarded as a mostly valedictory program.
At least that's how I would take the first two pieces they played, the String Quartet No. 5 of Hans Werner Henze - written in 1976 in memory of Benjamin Britten - and Britten's own Quartet No. 3, completed the year before as his last major work for the concert hall.With its slithery tonality, the Henze emerged in sweetly synchronous fashion, seamlessly integrated and exquisitely balanced. In short, these four players penetrated its musical and emotional center, whether in the skittishly disjunct second movement (marked "Breathless, wild") or the fleeting lyricism of the "heartbeat" movement that follows.
They did no less in the Britten, particularly in the third-movement "Solo," in which Matthias Lingenfelder's violin floated eeriliy above his colleagues, and the concluding Passacaglia, above whose mournful tread the specter of death hovers almost wistfully. (The music itself actually quotes from Britten's opera "Death in Venice" - where, as it happens, the quartet was finished.)
At the same time, however, they managed to incorporate a whiff of the younger Britten. Take the tunefulness they found in the slashing second-movement Ostinato and the songfulness to be heard even in the closing pages. Ditto the Shostakovichian wit of the Burlesque, otherwise harshly athletic.
For me, this was the highlight of the evening. But for most of the audience, I suspect it was Schubert's C major Quintet, which was even more vigorously applauded.
Dating from the last year of its composer's life, this is a work many also see as a farewell of sorts - though, as some have pointed out, Schubert was still only 31 years old. But with a silver-haired Martin Lovett joining the group, and with violinist Jens Oppermann moving into first chair, this performance even more strikingly embraced youth as well as age.
(Is it only coincidental that Lovett's Amadeus Quartet gave the posthumous premiere of the Britten?)
Again one heard that slightly disembodied upper register - here maybe with a little more wire - only coupled with an almost subliminal force. Thus the first movement proceeded in virile fashion even as the cellos savored its haunting subordinate theme. And amid the gentle antiphony of the slow movement came the tragic overtones of the middle section, here dramatically intense.
Similarly the outer sections of the Scherzo - as close as Schubert comes to foreshadowing Brahms - were dug into with a will, bracketing a trio I found unusually dark and somber, even in the trills.
After which came the controlled vigor of the finale, with its leaned-into accents and idiomatic hesitations, giving way to the dancing "Viennese cafe" music of the second subject. Reminding us that life can be both sad and happy - occasionally even at the same time.