The most surprising thing about the Arditti Quartet's concert of string quartets by Leos Janacek and new pieces by Adrian Jack was that Janacek's 70-year-old music sounded the more modern, extreme and uncompromising. The Ardittis played Jack's Third String Quartet, and gave the first ever performances of his Fourth Quartet and 08.02.01, a separate movement dedicated to the Ardittis' leader Irvine Arditti, on his birthday.
Jack's language is a well-mannered synthesis of 20th century styles. The second movement of the Third Quartet was a volatile scherzo, expertly versed in the extended harmonic palettes of Ravel and Debussy. The finale began as a quiet procession of diatonic chords, which eventually flowered into a lively unison passage. Finally, the piece returned to the translucent textures of the opening movement, as Jack integrated this static, reflective music within an organic argument. Yet for all Jack's compositional elegance, this quartet told an old, even hackneyed, story.
The three movements of the Fourth Quartet were still more conventional. Jack's slow movement created a subtle drama of continuity and interruption, as a series of gently rocking chords were fragmented into faltering, staccato phrases. However, there was nothing fresh or startling about this music, and the Ardittis' performances of all of Jack's quartets were uncharacteristically remote and uninvolving. Even the celebratory 08.02.01 was more enervating than exciting.
The title of Jack's 08.02.01 may have been a reference to Janacek's Piano Sonata 1.X.1905, one of the most famous pieces to be named after a date. But Janacek's two string quartets inhabit a totally different expressive world from Jack's. The Ardittis' account of Janacek's First String Quartet was full of their typical energy and elan, but this was a curiously unfocused performance.
However, the performance of Janacek's Second String Quartet which concluded the concert was brilliantly intense. In the codas to the first and fourth movements, Janacek seems to write against the grain of the instruments, producing sounds and raw noises of extraordinary force. The Ardittis are used to breaking limitations in the contemporary repertoire, a practice for which they are famous. Yet there was nothing complacent about their playing of this venerable masterpiece. The shocking juxtapositions felt as visceral as they must have done at its premiere.
