Music Review from The Columbus Dispatch
LITTLE-KNOWN PIECES GIVEN METICULOUS STAGING

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Jennifer Hambrick
For The Dispatch

In the fifth concert of the 2006-07 Chamber Music Columbus season, the Ohio-born Miro Quartet gave a dazzling performance of little-performed string quartets last evening at the Southern Theatre.

Currently quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas in Austin, the Miro formed at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music near Cleveland in 1995. The group has taken first prize in several top chamber-music competitions, including the Coleman Chamber Music Competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition.

The Miro Quartet cannot be accused of being sloppy in its preparation or lackadaisical in performance. The group milks the ultimate musical effect of every phrase, every note, resulting in meticulous playing, though with at times an overly dramatic flair.

The ensemble played basque composer Juan Crisostomo de Arriaga's Quartet No. 3 in E-flat Major with technical brilliance and a mixture of passion and graceful elegance. The first movement, Allegro, flowed effortlessly. In the hands of the Miro, the climax of the second movement, Pastorale: Andantino, was a storm like the Beethoven of the Pastoral Symphony could only have dreamed of.

First violinist Daniel Ching played the quirky melody of the Trio of Arriaga's third movement with notable elegance. The quartet played the fourth movement, Presto agitato, with technical brilliance, if perhaps somewhat too much intensity.

The Miro played the first movement, Allegretto, of Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 142, with immaculate technique. The Miro musicians captured the aimlessness of the second movement, Adagio, a web woven from the composer's famous wandering, searching melodies, in their sinewy sounds and sustained lines.

The ensemble performed a flawless transition into the third movement, Allegretto. Cellist Josh Gindele found an idea sound -- extroverted but not strident -- in his near-hysterical solo passage near the beginning of the movement. The work's final chord, beautifully tuned and balanced, simply floated to the heavens.

Most of Antonin Dvorak's String Quartet in A-flat Major, Op. 105, is composed on the development of brief motives rather than "whistleable" tunes. What tunes Dvorak did write, notably in the second and third movements, the quartet played with great expression.

The Miro's lively, crisp performance of the fourth movement, Allegro non tanto, brought the concert to an end.

Reprinted with permission.