City Recital Hall, Sydney
April 9, 2018

With only a few short months to go before the Eighth Melbourne International Chamber Music Festival begins, some of the stars of the Seventh are touring the country for Musica Viva. The Vienna-based Giocoso String Quartet – which has existed in its current form since 2014 – emerged from the 2015 competition as winners of the overall Second Prize, The Peter Druce Audience Prize as well as the Musica Viva Australia Prize, for which the winners are granted a national tour.

Opening the concert with Schumann’s String Quartet Opus 41 No 1 (the first of the composer’s 1842 trio of quartets, dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn), the ensemble demonstrated the finesse that made them so popular in Melbourne three years ago. The counterpoint of Schumann’s Introduzione was a beautiful way of introducing each of the four players, from Sebastian Casleanu’s luminescent violin down to Bas Jongen’s clean-limbed cello sound, the Quartet finding a gentle, well-blended tone that nonetheless hummed with life. Jongen’s cello propelled the music forward in the rhythmic Scherzo, and if there were a few moments of less than immaculate intonation in the second movement’s Intermezzo, there were also some finely fashioned swells. Violist...