The Calder Quartet (so-called after the sculptor Alexander Calder) got together as students at the University of Southern California and have since become hot property on the American chamber music circuit.
The photo next to their bio hints at the new-generation, new-world image they're going for: four chiselled young guys in skinny ties gaze coolly into the lens, Los Angeles skyline looming in the background.
In fact the way they played Mozart to open this recital and Mendelssohn to close it was pretty traditional. They're all impeccably schooled players and together make a fine, flexible sound. But it's nothing distinctive, and in an industry saturated with superlative young string quartets, distinctive is a must.
Part of the problem comes down to leader Benjamin Jacobson, whose delivery doesn't have enough character to really catch the ear. Mozart's Dissonance Quartet was bright but earnest; Mendelssohn's late String Quartet in F Minor Op 80 lacked the dark energy that can make this piece really terrifying.
The slow movement, especially, sounded more of a genial andante than the despairing Adagio Mendelssohn wrote after the death of his sister.
The Calders were more persuasive in newer music. They included a short work written last year by a fellow USC alumnus, Andrew Norman, whose "toward sunrise and the prime of light" uses piles of pretty harmonics to evoke sunrise inside Santa Sabina church in Rome.
The highlight of the programme was music by Thomas Adès, a composer the quartet has championed in the United States. His early Arcadiana is seven beautiful nocturnal vignettes that flit through snippets of near-quotation and reference – here sounding lucid and vibrant.
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