In an overlooked (though not underappreciated) fringe concert, Quartet Novalis made its Boston-and-BEMF debut in one of Commonwealth Avenue’s nondescript brownstones. The ensemble, composed of current-or-recent Julliard students, came hot off a successful stint as Academy Quartet at the Carmel Bach Festival, and we were fortunate to hear them play before rushing off to other competitions and festivals in New Hampshire and the Netherlands later this summer. The paintings on the walls of the grand hall of the College Club, something like a reimagining of Watteau’s through the lens of the Abrahamic tapestries at the Gardner, prepared us for the underplayed classical gems of string quartets by Hyacinthe Jadin and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel we would soon encounter.

The sentimental Jadin Quartet (Op. 2, No. 1 in E-flat) did not open with a bang but with a pensive Largo. Though the ensemble comprised four different players, they moved as one puppeteering the introduction through its course. Guided by cellist Luka Stefanović’s pulsating bass notes, the Largo organically took shape into a driving Allegro moderato. Eliana Estrada, first violinist for the first quartet, fully inhabited the soloistic role of the part. Upon the bed of rose leaves furnished by Ela Kodžas (2^nd violin) and Annemarie Schubert (viola), Estrada soared with a galant vocalise channeling CPE Bach’s Sturm und Drang. Despite being of the Classical era, the Adagio was not limited to one affect but moved through as many as a late romantic masterpiece of Mahler or Debussy. On a dime, Elaine’s cantabile darkened to a mournful distress while Stefanovic’s longing melody mutated into a sweet song of reprise. The menuetto continued this, dancing between courtly diversion and a somber, reflective mirror. The trio had no compunctions and attempted no profundity; it just swung merrily to the beat. The finale brought the show home with dynamic interplay between all members of the ensemble. Elaine and Stefanovic shared the tightest interplay of swoons (powdered with decadent portamenti) over Kodžas and Schubert’s syncopations and fine filigree.

While Jadin’s quartet proved a charming appetizer, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Quartet provided the main course. The virtuoso composition displayed Quartet Novalis’s technical mastery and in-sync ensemble skills. While the first movement was scored for strings, the ensembled realized the Adagio ma non troppo with a full scope of orchestral timbres, a personal favorite being Hensel’s harp-like arpeggiations that grew like flowers from the soil of Stefanović’s resonant bass. Hot on its heels, the thrilling Allegretto began, launched like an arrow from Stefanović’s c string. The opening remained withheld, teasing the audience with their potential through brilliantly interwoven pizzicati between Schubert (now on first violin) and Kodžas (continuing to hold the second violin line). In glassy schemers of descending chords over Luca’s chattering tremolos, the movement danced between fancy and madness until finally erupting into a hurricane of 16^th or 32^nd  notes imitating the opening to the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Op. 59, No. 3 quartet (with that viola solo) but five-to-six times as exhilarating. The whirlwind crescendoed in a hectic dance that evaporated before our eyes into two gentle plucks.

The following Romanze, a work encyclopedic of the tropes of love songs, displayed the genre’s best hits in a texture like the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. Estrada layered her patient murmur of viola over Luca’s emphatic cello swoon. Both crested as Schubert’s impassioned violin arc touched the stratosphere in great woe. As a team, the quartet built back up to a volcanic eruption of tone, colored in the oils of pungent viola, booming cello, and screaming violin. For the denouement, an elegiac coda that seemed to circle in a punitive wander, the string players produced a radically different tone, one more fluty, or clarinet-y, like a cross between a dulcian and an aeoline stop on a romantic organ: gently, subtle, distant-yet-personal, while as tart as strong kombucha. The choice colored the final bars from ones of comfort to ones of condolences.

The Allegro molto vivace synthesized the best moments of the work into a semi-fugal diatribe on the power of string players. Like a Verdian quartet number, the players passed our attention around like a football to scenes of sneering viola, chattering violin, belting cello, and soaring violin. Some in the back seats stood to get a better view and sound of the ensemble as they tore through the Allegro, putting the molto in “molto vivace.” It was the kind of performance one can’t help but loose oneself in, so engrossing you can’t blink, so captivating you can’t think about anything else, such an earworm you immediately listen to an inferior recording on the ride home, and so indulging one dares to shout: Encore!

A musicology PhD student at Boston University, Christopher Hodges earned a M.M. in organ performance with Peter Sykes.