The Pacifica Quartet is an American ensemble, formed in 1994, which has enjoyed various residencies including at the University of Chicago and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as producing a number of highly praised recordings. The ensemble has toured Australia before and is here once again, courtesy of Musica Viva, playing two programmws. The first consists of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 135 (his final quartet), String Quartet No 2 by the Australian composer Nigel Westlake, and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No 3.

^{Pacifica Quartet. Photograph © Keith Saunders}

Despite the 120-year gap between them, the Beethoven and Shostakovich works have a certain amount in common. Both are deeply personal statements by their composers. Both begin by attempting a light touch but find themselves drawn off course, leading to heartbreaking slow movements. Beethoven’s Quartet No 16 seems intent on returning to a Haydn-esque style of classicism, which is then undercut by interruptions, exploratory modulations that are abruptly abandoned, and (in the Vivace movement) a passage of frustrated, relentless rhythmic repetition. The heart of the work is the poignant Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo. Here the Pacifica’s extraordinary precision was used to...