Heath Quartet, Wigmore Hall, concert review: 'Exquisitely rendered'

Six masterpieces of Bartok's Hungarian art music, performed by the young Heath Quartet

The Heath Quartet (Kaupo Kikkas)

Bartok’s six string quartets comprise just under two hours of music, but they contain worlds within worlds: the musics of Transylvania and Algeria, where Bartok collected folk songs and dances for transmutation into European forms; the fragmenting world of those European forms, which he prevented from fragmenting further by finding ever-new uses for tonality; and the fragmenting Austro-Hungarian world, out of which he was creating a new Hungarian art music.

These six masterpieces are miracles of compressed allusiveness, and every group of players has to find its own way into them. The young Heath Quartet, who are also professors of chamber music at the Guildhall, have a beefy, muscular sound which allows them to convey all the energy latent in the fast movements, but there were moments – notably in the Moderato of No 2 – when this sound created muddiness where clarity was particularly needed to achieve the delicate balance of the voices. On the other hand, the lament which closes that quartet, with the players forming two answering duos, was exquisitely rendered, as was the elegiac final quartet with its irredeemably bleak conclusion – this was 1939, and the composer was going into exile.