Monday, May 15, 2006

Daedalus Quartet
 
By Stephen Brookes

Despite the name, the Daedalus Quartet seemed it was flying Friday not on wings of waxy feathers, but rather on jet-propelled rockets of blistering virtuosity.

Since bursting onto the scene six years ago, this young ensemble has been making a name for itself as one of the hottest quartets around — and at its Corcoran Gallery performance, it showed why.

The program opened with the first of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, Op. 44, No. 1, in D. It’s a light work that critics love to dismiss. Sure, the drama gets a little high sometimes, the gestures a little too sweeping, but there’s so much pure pleasure in it that you forgive the indulgences and yearn for more. The Daedalus gave it a heady reading: The Allegro exploded out of the gate, the Menuetto ached with bittersweet longing, and the Presto con brio — well, refer back to those “rockets of blistering virtuosity.”

While Mendelssohn sweeps you off your feet, Béla Bartók would rather just pull the rug out from under you — and then hit you with it. His Quartet No. 3 is a wild and unfettered masterpiece, a storm of ear-bending sonorities and inventive, edgy rhythms.

The Daedalus dove into it with fearless abandon — the music rang gloriously, and the audience emerged wowed and grateful.

But that was mere prelude to Mozart’s String Quintet in E-flat, K. 614, which the Daedalus (joined by Roger Tapping on viola) gave a full-blooded, magnificent reading — one so hot you could almost smell wax in the air.