Incredible string bands

WINNING one international competition is not an automatic guarantee of success in the music business, but winning two will almost certainly provide the kind of Cape Kennedy liftoff to career levels every aspiring young musician dreams of.

The Belcea Quartet, established in 1994 when the members were still students at the Royal Academy Of Music, has rapidly made its mark as one of the leading quartets of the younger generation. Instrumental virtuosity, intuitive insight and powerfully projected interpretations have long been hallmarks of the quartet's concert performances.

Major international success arrived only five years into the life of the group when it won the first prizes of the International String Quartet competitions at both Osaka and Bordeaux.

Since then, life has been a continuous series of global concert tours and recording projects, both bringing further recognition in the form of industry awards - The 2002 Gramophone Award and The Royal Philharmonic Society Chamber Music award.

High profile stuff.

Much more recently on the scene, with a Dublin debut concert in 2001, the Callino Quartet has already seriously established its credentials, receiving special recognition for its performance in the Italian Borciani String Quartet Competition in 2002. Outright international competition success has yet to arrive, but I have no doubt, on the strength of their performance last week that it is only a matter of time.

For this third and final concert of Tunnell Trust For Young Musicians Celebrity Series series, the Belcea Quartet took the first half for its performances of Mozart's Quartet in D, K499 and Bartok's intimate, earthy, fullblooded, and finally explosive, Quartet No 1 Op 7 - both works replacing the originally advertised programme.

One sensed an immediate performer-audience rapport with these musicians. There is a conversational quality to their playing, an exchange of ideas and musical observations which has the listener involved from the start.

The sensitive feeling for line, combined with impeccable ensemble, opened Mozart's intimate Hoffmeister Quartet with a refinement which developed through the performance, bringing moments of subtle expressiveness and thoughtful intensity to a beautifully blended and paced interpretation.

The influence of Hungarian folk music, together with that of Romania and Yugoslavia, is tremendously strong in all of Bartok's mature writing. The consequential strongly rhythmic, percussive, sharply dissonant music needs bite, attack, warmth and above all an understanding of the idiom so central to Bartok's output. The Belceas brought all of that and more to their incredibly powerful and virtuosic reading of the First Quartet. This was playing of enormous conviction that grew both in fervour and expressiveness, drawing one in to the disturbing fascination of Bartok's tortured emotions.

The technical accomplishment alone of the playing would have been impressive enough, but this performance was much more profound.

The soaring, glorious violin tones of leader Corina Belcea, the expressive and intellectual intensity of her colleagues, violinist Laura Samuel, violist Krzysztof Chorzelski and Scots cellist, Alasdair Tait, combined to create a performance of such colour, drama and concentration that I found myself on the edge of the seat, practically rigid with the intensity of it. Astounding music.

Astounding playing.

After Bartok, the endless pleasures of Mendelssohn's mid-teen masterpiece, the Octet in E flat, was inspired programme planning. Taking their places alongside the Belcea Quartet, the young Callino Quartet joined to deliver a sparkling and refreshing account of this boyhood miracle. With the heroic tones of Corina Belcea's violin leading the combined quartets, this was an utterly absorbing and delightful performance; polished, stylish and with the complete composure and assurance of gifted and perceptive musicians.