MALVERN Concert Club closed its 2013-14 season with a subtle and entrancing concert by the Aronowitz Ensemble. Founded ten years ago and joining the prestigious BBC New Generation Artists scheme two years later, this ensemble has been pushing the boundaries of Romantic performance, both with unusual repertoire, and an approach to interpretation that sensitive rather than self-consciously expressive. The first half consisted of one piece, Bruckner’s String Quintet, from 1879. Running to almost fifty minutes and including passages of complex counterpoint and obscure harmony, this quintet would be intolerably dull in a mediocre performance, yet the Aronowitz held their audience throughout, spinning out the many quieter passages as if time had stopped altogether, and taking care not to overplay the occasional bombastic gestures. The four upper strings (two violins and two violas) generated a wonderfully intricate tapestry, punctuated (like an organ pedal-section) by the cello whose brighter, more soloistic tone merely emphasized the otherworldliness of the upper strings. A key to the success of the performance was the frequent (and brave) use of the quietest sounds: a mere murmur from one of the violas was sufficient to capture and hold the packed Forum Theatre.

The playing of the Bruckner generated huge anticipation for the Schubert String Quintet that was to follow the interval. True to form, we were treated to an interpretation that shunned the big gesture – the steely, masculine style of string playing that became fashionable in the 1990s has given way to an intimacy of tone and sensitivity of expression, even in the raunchier third and fourth movements. The Scherzo was less ‘daemonic’ and ‘tempestuous’, as suggested in the programme note, than bucolic, a village dance that could at any moment dissolve into the night, while in the final movement the curious collapse in the coda became structural, a reminder that music, and this work in particular, begins and ends in silence. And so the final accelerando came as a performative flourish, a gesture of gratitude to the audience. And what an audience, hanging of every sound, every breath!

The Concert Club triumphs again – and yet a question remains: when in Malvern are we going to hear some of the twentieth-century masterpieces of chamber music, such as the Lutos?awski quartets or the huge amount of outstanding chamber music written by British composers over the last thirty years? A start has been made with this year’s commission, but what about the more recent classics which are nowadays so rarely heard?

By Peter Johnson