It’s hard to beat the pedigree of the Artemis Quartet, which studied with the vaunted Alban Berg Quartet in Cologne and took part in master classes with the Emerson and Juilliard string quartets in this country.
The ensemble came together in 1989 at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, Germany, and launched an international career after winning prizes in several significant competitions.
Less than a year after perhaps the biggest turning point in the Artemis’ career, an exclusive recording contract with Virgin Classics, the group made its debut Wednesday night at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts under the auspices of the Friends of Chamber Music.
But the group is not new to Colorado. Shortly after its formation, it spent two summers at the Aspen Music Festival’s Center for Advanced Quartet Studies.
That the Artemis is now ready to take its place among the world’s elite quartets was made clear by the evening’s centerpiece – a rare and utterly gripping performance of György Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 1, “Métamorphoses nocturnes.”
Although its title suggests a gentle, almost dream-like work, it is anything but. Predominantly strident and relentless with sharp, abrupt shifts, the 1953-54 quartet is interrupted only occasionally by a lone, forlorn violin or an aching, empty chord.
Eerie slides and odd sound effects collide with deliberately screechy, scratchy bowings and discordant, one could even say ugly, harmonies; yet through it all emerges a strange and transfixing beauty.
It is an enormously challenging piece to pull off successfully, requiring exacting precision and enormous emotional investment. The Artemis delivered those elements and more, with razor’s-edge intensity and a willingness to push the music to its absolute breaking point.
In addition to those qualities, the quartet possesses a compelling unity and cohesion, and its four members are well matched. It exudes a kind of European refinement, with a sound that is more mellow and less muscular than some of its counterparts.
It returned in the second half for a wonderfully satisfying, eloquent interpretation of Franz Schubert’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 29, No. 1, D. 804, “Rosamunde.”
As an encore, the Artemis offered a section from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet in G major, K. 387.
