Wednesday’s lunchtime concert at Heliconian Hall; part of Toronto Summer Music, featured two pieces of chamber music by Beethoven and Shostakovich. The first was the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op.132. It was played by Justin Saulnier, Ashley Tsai, Bill Ko and Claire Park. It’s an unusual movement, especially taken out of context. It intersperses intricate, very slow passages where phrases are passed between the players without too much in the way of obvious clues for where the music is going. It’s profound and quite ethereal. These sections arr interwoven with livelier sections where the “cues” are more obvious. I would think it’s difficult to get just right at the best of times and for what amounts to a “scratch” quartet to handle it as well as they did is admirable. It feels like the sort of music that one needs to play with the same colleagues for twenty years! Incidentally, the same team is playing all four movements of this work tomorrow at noon.