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Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Thomas Adès's The Four Quarters formed the centrepiece of this programme by the Emersons, who are currently touring the work following their premiere performance in Carnegie Hall last month. Coming in at around 20 minutes, its four movements comprise a suite of character pieces rather than providing a substantial or unified musical narrative.
They nevertheless offer a wide range of mood and texture within a programmatic trajectory moving from one dusk to the next. The jumpy accents of Nightfalls recall the uneasy, insect-infested nightscapes of Bartók. More overtly aggressive are the virtually constant pizzicatos of Morning Dew, whose water droplets fall with almost torrential impact. Days is more equable and consistent, hanging onto a rhythmic ostinato while rising to a hefty climax before sinking back into silence, though it is also the least memorable of the four. The finale, The Twenty-fifth Hour, is named for its unusual time-signature (25/16), whose multiple additive rhythms rarely sounded natural in execution; its appeal lay in its technical fascination rather than in providing the set with a definite conclusion.
On first hearing, the work registers as accomplished in detail if finicky, its concentration on the minutest moment as opposed to the larger span weakening the overview that makes Adès's best pieces enthralling as wholes rather than of merely piecemeal interest.
The performance, though, was assured, arguably more so in its entirety than either of the classic works on either side. The opening Mendelssohn quartet - in E flat, Op. 44 No. 3 - took a while to settle, reaching perfect interpretational unanimity only halfway through the Adagio, while Beethoven's late C sharp minor quartet, which had many passages of immense subtlety and distinction, also had others where this most extraordinary work in the entire canon sounded surprisingly conventional.
