We watched the Pavel Haas Quartet play Dvorak’s American Quartet.  I closed my eyes a lot of the time.  The music was sublime, a rhapsody of intimacy which challenged me over and over again to separate out each of the four instruments from the melded sound that tumbled over and over in endless variations, rising, soaring and falling back down to earth.  Intuitively they read each other’s playing, perfectly in time and tune.  Somewhere there was bird song.  A swallow swooping, a lark rising.  A violin rose above the complicated patterns to sing solo.  A cello interrupted to insist wistfully.  Like a revolving mobius strip the music turned, turning, turning this way and that.  The quartet tickled the music, teased the notes, drew them out and blew them in our direction.  Sometimes a high reedy melody, sometimes a luxuriant liquid like folded chocolate being stirred.

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