On the occasion of the 60th jubilee year of the Indo-Swiss Friendship Treaty, the embassy of Switzerland presented the Galatea String Quartet at the Calcutta School of Music on February 8. The familiar venue of the Sandre Memorial Hall has seen some memorable musical presentations and this will go down as one of the best. The quartet consists of four young musicians — Yuka Tsuboi, violin; Sarah Kilchenmann, violin; David Schneebeli, viola; and Julien Kilchenmann, violoncello.

The evening commenced with the third movement of the String Quartet by Frank Martin, who is considered Switzerland’s greatest composer. His development went through a process of serialization from early Fauré and Ravel through the expressionism of Berg and Schoenberg, to arrive at his own personal style of which this piece is an example. Introduced in breathtakingly close dissonances played pianissimo, bows up near the bridge, it displayed the performers’ interaction and their exquisite control over phrasing and timing.

Tsuboi wields a compelling bow, her wrist, arm and excellent technique a pleasure to see as well as hear, complemented by the violin of Sarah Kilchenmann, the viola and the cello. The largetto was a mysterious and haunting introduction to the fine tonal balance of the ensemble.

The Quartet in D minor, KV 421 by Mozart (why don’t we hear more Mozart these days?), in the style of Haydn, was next. No.13 of the 26 quartets, this familiar and much loved work, is an example of the unfailing melodic outpouring of happiness, recognizable in the early works. The dialoguic content was expressed poignantly, especially in the andante.

Following the interval, the quartet played Beethoven’s Quartet Opus 74 in E flat major. The full depth of Beethoven’s inspiration may be found to be consolidated in his string quartets. Among his later compositions, they are of an intriguing, contemplative and harmonically futuristic nature. They exploit the musical, technical and intellectual skills of the string quartet like no other. This work — the 10th, called the “Harp Quartet” — begins poco adagio with a tense build up to the allegro, punctuated by explosive harp-like plucked chords heard in the first violin. Here, as before, the second movement, adagio ma non troppo, and the allegretto con variazioni were played lyrically, while the third movement, presto, was performed with a sprightly vigour.

To enthusiastic applause and calls for an encore, they played two surprising arrangements of Tagore’s Pran chaye chokkhu na chaye (charmingly mispronounced by Julien Kilchenmann) and Mor bina othhe, both commendably harmonized by Subrato Pramanik and sensitively rendered. A fitting conclusion to the year’s celebrations of the Friendship Treaty — but would it not have been delightful to have heard more Mozart?