Mozart Eine kleine Nachtmusik - Serenade in Gmajor, K-525, 2nd Movement II Romance Andante

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The Gewandhaus Quartet plays the 2nd movement - Romance Andante - of Mozart's Serenade in G Major: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music).
K. 525
The Gewandhaus Quartet claims to be the oldest continuously active string quartet in history, and it has reason on its side, in that the principal strings of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have been performing as the Gewandhaus Quartet for nearly two hundred years. The present foursome, though — Frank-Michel Erben and Conrad Suske, violins; Volker Metz, viola; and Jurnjakob Timm, cello — have been together merely for a decade. They played Sunday afternoon at San Francisco State University's McKenna Theater for an audience that I suspect was more interested in the repertoire than in the group's history.

As a quartet, the Gewandhaus have an unusual sound and a more unusual balance. The sound is very solid and concentrated, to the point where I started to feel the sameness — not of color exactly, but of density — as a little oppressive. These are players who don't "float" notes; they may play very quietly, but there is always some grain in the sound. And then the balance: I have never heard a quartet less interested in subordinating accompanimental parts to leading ones. It wasn't just a matter of the inner strings playing out; it was a sort of free-for-all, or so you might have called it had you not seen with what discipline the four played, hardly glancing at one another and not moving demonstratively except in a very few places.

Add that the players took unusual and exaggerative notice of articulation marks and accents, and that they bent tempo only when the score absolutely required it, and even I began to think, "Well, what else did you expect a quartet of principal strings from a top orchestra to play like?"