The Alban Berg Quartet are acknowledged masters of the classical and romantic repertoire, but they proved themselves equally virtuosic interpreters of the Argentinian tango in their latest Queen Elizabeth Hall programme. Joined by bandoneon player Per Arne Glorvigen, they played Astor Piazzolla's Four Tango Sensations with an idiomatic and intense melancholy. Each "sensation" is a depiction of a heightened emotional state, from the jagged rhythms of Anxiety to the obsessive repetitions of the final Fear.
Written after a serious illness, Piazzolla's pieces are a musical farewell to life, and the string instruments represent his premonitions with chilling directness: the players knock the wood of their instruments in the opening movement, turning them into deathly rattles, and conjure ghostly screams and whistles from them in Fear. Glorvigen and the quartet gave the piece an impressive, symphonic sweep, as well as a gripping sadness.
There was a more elusive farewell in the UK premiere of Kurt Schwertsik's Adieu Satie, another piece for bandoneon and string quartet. The five movements pay tribute to Satie, and while each makes reference to the composer's own music, Schwertsik adds a piquant dissonance that both honours and distorts the originals. The familiar rhythms of the Gymnopédies are refracted through a prism of new harmonies and colours, like a distorted photograph of the original pieces. These strange surrealisations created a delicate wit that Satie would surely have recognised.
But it was the performance of Smetana's First String Quartet, called From My Life, that revealed the Alban Berg's virtuosic technique and musical insight. If Piazzolla reflects pain and fear in his four pieces, Smetana's work sets out to dramatise the emotional trajectory of his entire life in four compressed movements. The result is one of the most radical string quartets of the 19th century, and the Alban Berg players created a compelling portrait of Smetana's life of fulfilment and loss.
The minor-key cello solo in the slow movement was stilled by the warm, major-key embrace of the other instruments, a vision of his love for his wife. After a burst of energy, the collapse at the end of the finale was total: the high E in the first violin representing the onset of Smetana's deafness, the rest of the coda a fragmented tapestry of memories and allusion.
