City Recital Hall, Sydney
February 24, 2014

“Hungary is a landlocked country”. Thus spake Carl Vine in a concert preamble to explain the likely reason for the Kelemen Quartet heading straight for Manly Beach on arrival in Sydney – a trip that saw their cellist Dóra Kokas fracture her wrist as a result of a collision with a passing surfer. So, one man down at the start of their debut Australian tour but were the heroic Hungarians going to let that stop them? Not a bit of it, as this hastily devised program (or “celebration” as Vine put it) of solos, duos and trios for violins and viola proved.

The evening began with one of Mozart’s two duos, written to help out his friend Michael Haydn with an onerous commission (and long thought to actually be by him). It’s a charming, sunny work in B Flat Major for violin and viola and well worth the hearing, especially as played here by Barnabás Kelemen and his wife Katalin Kokas. Relishing the invention and the way Mozart throws the focus from one instrument to the other, the pair were elegance personified, capturing every ounce of the jaunty variety on offer. Classical delicacy was...