CONCERT PROGRAMME Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Quartet no. 66 i G major, opus 77, no. 1 HobIII:81Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Quartet no. 1 i C major, opus 49César Franck (1822-1890): Piano quintet in F minorThe series of great sting quartets to have visited the Mogens Dahl Concert Hall is now joined by an American quartet of unique stability.Three of its current artists – violinists Ralph Evans and Efim Boico, and cellist Wolfgang Laufer – have performed together for more than 15 years. Viola player Nicol Eugelmi joined the quartet as its newest member in 2009. The Fine Arts Quartet has been touring regularly and giving concerts at musical centres all over the world since its formation in 1946. Like the Julliard and Borodin Quartets, who visited the Mogens Dahl Concert Hall the previous two seasons, it is among the world’s longest existing string quartets, and best!Cristina Ortiz is a pianist with the world as her scene. She was born in Brazil, studied in France, lives in London and performs as a soloist with all and sundry, for instance: the philharmonic orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, Chicago, Sydney and Philadelphia.The evening’s programme opens with classic elegance, one of Haydn’s last quartets, written at a time when the composer was struggling with aggravating illness, though it is certainly not a weakened personality one hears in the music. It is lively, full of contrasts and thematically ingenious with a beautifully invigorating last movement which both manages to be harmonically surprising and make a dashing high-tempo finale of the piece.Shostakovich composed his first string quartet in 1936 shortly after his first of a long series of controversies with the Soviet regime. Apparently Stalin was behind the rejection of Shostakovich’s fourth symphony, which was not performed until 1961. In chamber music the latitude was greater for some of the grotesque-humorous explorations and experiments which the newspaper Pravda had found “coarse, primitive and vulgar.” Especially the last movement offers examples of sudden shifts between little, naive melodies and harsh harmonic clashes.The evening is brought to a close with one of French late-romanticist César Franck’s most famous pieces. An amazing symbiosis between the king of instruments, the piano, and the string quartet’s infinite variety of expression. Notice, for instance, how the piano’s first entrée is underplayed and mellow, how the slow melancholy of the second movement is accompanied by simple rhythmic figures in the piano, and how the last movement ends with a very impressive climactic build-up by the whole ensemble.