St Mark’s Church with its lovely acoustic was the ideal venue for their 10th anniversary concert. The Aroha Quartet is a significant chamber ensemble in NZ creating fine performances and loyal audiences. Aroha is a worthy name for this ensemble because of the warm and impassioned performances they give; this performance was no exception.

Mozart’s String Quartet No 1 K80 displayed a juvenile side to Mozart, not inferior but youthful with the quartet form still emerging; the sweet beautifully shaped phrases were resplendent, adorned with finely balanced inner parts and tempi that seemed natural. The playing was crisp and light; one could almost hear strains of his early string divertimenti style.

Zhou Long’s Eight Chinese Folk Songs are beautiful and highly accomplished arrangements of various types of traditional songs. The bringing together of two musical traditions into a new well integrated aural palette that convinces is as much about the performers as the composer. The Aroha Quartet showed great sensitivity in merging these idioms; they captured the character of each song, each a cameo where subtle sonorities and textures, some melodic, others harmonic or rhythmic were beautifully drawn.

Sam Piper’s Dance of the Sidhe was characterful, being spritely and energetic in the outer movements while the inner had very delicate hues.

In Shostakovich’s Elegy the muted strings were imbued with an impassioned melancholy while the Polka portrayed an element of the composer’s sardonic humour.

With the last of Beethoven’s early String Quartets, Op. 18 No 6, dedicated to Mozart the quartet captured all the classical elements. The tempi throughout superb, the flowing melodies sung, the conversational elements were well balanced, the syncopated Scherzo was rhythmically explosive, and the melancholy of the last movement was exquisitely delicate.

The encore was a hybrid; a Czardas of Hungarian Chinese extraction, Saliha both charmed and intrigued. A lovely concert.