OCCASIONALLY a single work in a programme dominates the horizon in a listener's perspective.
It does not detract from anything else in the programme; it does not refer to the quality of the performance; and it is not something from which you can generalise: the chances are the perspective is uniquely your own.
Anyway, it hit me during the glorious performance by the Ebene Quartet on Saturday at the final morning concert of this year's festival. The young French group is a compelling ensemble. You would expect high standards of integration in any string quartet, with no domination by any individual. But the French group is so refined in its ensemble playing, with a palette of dynamic shadings and gradings almost limitless in its potential, that the four players really are in a league of their own.
They had already delivered a mature and sophisticated account of Haydn's Emperor Quartet, and a blisteringly lucid and intense version of Bartok's pungent Fourth Quartet, one where the impossibilities dissolved before the endlessly refined technical armoury of the Ebene Quartet.
The second half was given over to Mendelssohn's Second String Quartet, which has a bit of a reputation because of its leanings on late Beethoven: and, indeed, Saturday's programme note meticulously annotated these references and influences.
Then the group played the piece, and you know what? All of these became irrelevant as the Ebene Quartet produced a supremely integrated composition that had the words "total masterpiece" right through its DNA. It was a performance that revealed much about the music itself; and that's what it's all about, this business.
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