If the Wigmore Hall sought perfection in its 125th Anniversary Festival, it found it in the two concerts I've attended this week - in the greater part of Lise Davidsen's and James Baillieu's Schubert cornucopia, and last night in the sublime Belcea Quartet's teaming up with similarly legendary viola player Tabea Zimmermann in two awe-inspiring string quintet masterpieces.
Zimmermann held centre place in Mozart's G minor Quintet, telling from the start because Mozart has the first viola as the lower of the top three voices at the start, only to take the upper line with second viola and cello in plangent symmetries. Time and again Corina Belcea gave us a voice from another planet, though there was marshalled passion in the Menuetto. It's merely a personal thing, but I'd give all the slow movements of Beethoven's late quartets for the humanity of this Adagio ma non troppo. It sounds as if, proto-Beethoven-style, Mozart is going to surprise us with another Adagio movement - there is material enough for one in the finale's introduction - before leaping into the light for an Allegro which may be simple compared to what's gone before, but overwhelms with its G major joy.
Silk gloves were off, though there was no less sophistication, in the first of Brahms's string quintets, the F major Op. 88. The first-movement development was just subsiding when Corina broke a string. She went off, the other players showed how relaxed they were about it in genial conversation, she returned quickly and we got the movement from the beginning, but without the exposition repeat: a chance, among other wonders, to hear Krzysztof Chorzelski, swapping first-viola role with Zimmermann, play the lovely second theme that startles by starting with brief waltz-mode a fourth time (it returns, of course, in the recap).
The slow movement's switches between sarabande seriousness and light scherzo mood seemed stranger, in a good sense, than ever. Nothing could sum up the other-worldly magic in the concert than the five sustained chords at the end. And then, more joy unleashed with robust exuberance, a fugal charge hopping over to a jig and the most exhilarating of codas. As serious encore, the five magnificent players went deep into the Adagio of Brahms's other String Quintet, Op. 111. I'd have been happy with a second interval followed by the whole of that - its first movement is surely Brahms's most joyous among his chamber works - but best not to be greedy when you've already had perfection.
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