The Washington Post 1/30/06: If you're a card-carrying Mozart fanatic (and if you're not, what's the problem?), you were probably at the great composer's 250th birthday party at the Austrian Embassy on Friday night, where a packed house greeted the young and spectacularly talented Minetti String Quartet.
Let's just say this upfront: The Minetti has a huge future, boasting thoughtful interpretations, beautiful ensemble work, crisp articulation and flawless technique -- not to mention the fact that the players are all drop-dead gorgeous.
Yet despite all that, the party got off to a rather slow start, with two very early Mozart quartets (the G Major, K. 156, and C Major, K. 157) that can only be described as slight. The works fluttered prettily by like leaves in the breeze, leaving minimal impact on the ears, and were followed by yet more fluff and puff: Franz Schubert's Quartet in E-flat, D. 87. Schubert was only 16 when he wrote it, and it's not completely awful. But frankly, it felt like being stuck at dinner with a precocious, self-involved teenager. Unusual kid, talented, you wish him well, but really . . . doesn't he have somewhere to go while the grown-ups talk?
But never mind, because after intermission things got interesting. The Minetti dug into the first and only mature work of the evening, Schubert's "Death and the Maiden," D. 810, with a vengeance. And let there be no doubt: This was very high-caliber musicianship -- a nuanced, passionate, profoundly satisfying interpretation. Too bad for old Wolfgang, who got upstaged at his own party. But for the rest of us, it was simply a stunning and brilliant display of what string quartet playing is all about.