Essential food for the soul from the Belcea Quartet

In a world apparently going – if not having already gone – completely mad, food for the soul is essential to keep one going, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank provided the setting for just that on Tuesday evening.

The Belcea Quartet opened with Haydn’s String Quartet in G, Op33 No5. Sometimes nicknamed How do you do? for the curtseying, four-note opening phrase at the beginning and end of the first movement, it’s a light piece with a sense of wit.

In other words, it's somewhat unexpected if what you're expecting is the polite formality of early Classical chamber music.

But written in 1781, it was one of a series of pieces that Haydn advertised to potential subscribers as being very new. And in breaking that polite formality, they were.

My knowledge of chamber music from the Classical periodc is far, far from being encyclopedic – and certainly not when it comes to the man known as the ‘Father of the Symphony’ and the ‘Father of String Quartet’ – but this was toe-tapping stuff.

Indeed, I've arguably avoided Haydn over the years because I find him so formal. It's equally no coincidence that my favourite Classical composer is Beethoven, who heralded in the Romantic era.

The quartet’s repertoire doesn’t often include Haydn: Krzyysztof Chorzelski, the viola player – who had run astonishingly run the London Marathon a couple of days previously for a pancreatic cancer research charity – has said that this is partly because Haydn’s music was never intended for public performance in large concert venues.

With this work, they apparently feel more liberated – and, indeed, it was a wonderful performance, free yet controlled.

Next up was Janáček’s String Quartet No2. This is known as ‘Intimate Letters,’ because of the composer’s passion for Kamila Stösslová, who he met and became besotted with in 1917. The quartet, written in 1928 (the year of his death), enshrines the sentiments of the hundreds of ardent letters and messages he sent her.

Overflowing with a sense of passion, with Romantic passages and the clear influences of folk music, it’s a wondrous piece – light years away from any concept of chamber music as essentially stuffy.

I know very little about Janáček’s music: this made me want to know a lot more.

After the interval, the Belcea were joined on stage by pianist Piotr Anderszewski for Shostakovich’s Quintet in G minor for piano & strings, Op57.

The nods back to Beethoven are clear in the first movement, but elsewhere it is impish, sometimes dark and sometimes light.

I wasn’t familiar any of the works before hearing them live – but what a programme.

The big question is whether to watch the musicians closely or to close your eyes and let the music itself take centre stage. I moved between the two, but the latter has definite advantages: it’s as though the music itself takes on a whole new dimension.

The Belcea are all exceptionally fine musicians: founder and violinist Corina Belcea stands out, as does Antoine Lederlin on the cello. But when the music gives them the opportunity, Chorzelski and Axel Schacher on violin show just how much they can shine too. Anderszewski, too, is a musician of very high calibre.

When you get the chance to hear musicians like this live, the results can be utterly uplifting. Thank goodness that The Other Half had spotted that this concert was on – it was brilliant.

The only surprise was that the hall was barely half full. The audience that was there, however, more than made up for numbers in its appreciation.