The Radlett Music Club continues to offer excellent programmes in its 75th anniversary season. In its concert last week at the Radlett Centre, the distinguished Navarra Quartet performed three major works of the string quartet repertoire.

Haydn is credited with establishing the string quartet form. His Opus 76, composed in 1797, towards the end of his life, from which the Quartet No.1 in G began the concert, has the characteristic inventiveness and lively themes that make his music popular. Notably, it looks ahead, as the so-called Minuet has the speed for which later composers might have described it as a scherzo.

Throughout the concert, the Navarra Quartet played with a polish that enabled the audience to appreciate fully the genius of these compositions, which spanned some three-quarters of a century of musical development.

the Quartet No.1 in C minor from Brahms's Opus 51 was published in 1873. Brahms's admiration of Beethoven, which caused him to delay such ambitious works until middle age, showed immediately. The slow movement is described as a Romanza - an instance of how this composer expressed the romanticism of his time through a classical approach. Similarly typical for his time was the interest in folk music; it can be detected in the violin parts, for instance (Magnus Johnson and Marije Ploemacher).

Romanticism was already fundamental in music by 1824, when Schubert wrote his Quartet No.13 in A minor, known as Die Rosamunde after a stage work for which he had written incidental music. Because the four movements only differ moderately in speed, everything depends on tone and expression.

The opening theme of the first movement emerges from the lower strings (Simone van der Giessen, viola, and Nathaniel Boyd, 'cello), Some of the themes are famous. The third movement; though described as a minuet, has a meditative character, as indeed does the whole work - like much of Schubert's output, it contemplates a domestic audience rather than the concert hall. The fourth movement, Allegro moderato, is more vigorous and brings the work to a thoughtful conclusion.

Graham Mordue