The St. Lawrence String Quartet opened this year’s Toronto Summer Music Festival with a really interesting programme.  They kicked off with the Haydn String Quartet No. 25 in C Major.  This very much belied the idea that Haydn is a skilful but not especially inventive composer.  It’s full of invention; especially rhythmic and really suited the intensely physical style of the St. Lawrences; especially the hyperkinetic first violin, Geoff Nuttall, who also contributed a rather extraordinary pair of socks to the evening’s festivities.  Watching, too, is a different experience from listening and here pointed up the extent to which chamber music like this is a conversation between the players rather than a regimented or choreographed thing.

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