The Music Nairn audience had an extremely enjoyable evening of string quartet classics when the Resol String Quartet brought their programme of Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven to the Nairn Community and Arts Centre.  Their concert opened with the first of Haydn's op 74, a set of three string quartets composed in 1793 between the composer's two important visits to London.  Haydn's skill in this medium had reached a degree of maturity which was unchallenged at the time, and in this set he gave the leading violin a technically challenging almost concerto-like solo part, with the other instruments often forming an accompanying texture.  Generally speaking, the Resol Quartet's leader Eliette Harris rose well to the considerable challenges of this music, and if not every one of the virtuosic and often stratospherically high passages landed perfectly, the ensemble as a whole captured the excitement of this ground-breaking repertoire.  Amongst the sparklingly imaginative writing, the wit and the endless invention we associate with Haydn at this time, there are passages, most noticeably in the delightful Andantino, where a shadow falls across proceedings – we would recall that Haydn's student and young friend Mozart had tragically died just two years earlier. 

From Haydn to Schubert, and a Quartet written just over twenty years after the Haydn piece we had just heard.  Schubert's ninth Quartet D173 was composed in 1815, but already inhabits an entirely different world.  In a powerful pre-figuration of Schubert's own 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet, this piece begins with a movement of intense almost violent drama with short, emphatic phrases and passionate outbursts.  The Resol Quartet's reading was powerful indeed, bringing out the full stormy nature of this music.  The group's cellist Chloe Randall revealed in her introduction that the group frequently construct their own narrative to underlay abstract pieces, and on the evidence of this subtly expressive reading, this is clearly a strategy which works very well.  Incidentally, Chloe joined the ensemble relatively recently and has been entirely integrated, while bringing her own powerful energy to the group.  In addition to the thrilling drama, the Quartet found the sweetness in Schubert's writing, giving us a beautifully rounded account of this fine music. 

The third great master of the medium to be represented in this succession of giants was Beethoven, whose third Quartet from his op 59 set made up the second half.  Called the 'Razumovsky Quartets' after the Russian Ambassador to Vienna who commissioned them, they date from 1805, a time when Beethoven had entered his 'middle period', reaching new levels of originality and sheer genius.  In a remarkable account of this music, the Resol Quartet showed they had the measure of this revolutionary music, from the enigmatic slow introduction to the absolutely fizzing concluding Allegro molto.  Seldom has this stunning Finale been played more 'molto', and at the same time so breathtakingly accurately and precisely.  Again this bravura playing was counter-pointed with some wonderfully expressive and sensitive passages, where the full depth of Beethoven's expressive range was fully explored.  The Nairn audience was simply and understandably blown away by this mesmerising blizzard of notes, and an enthusiastic ovation was rewarded with a lovely arrangement of the Burns song 'My Love is like a red, red Rose', usefully reminding us of the Quartet's roots in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.