Henschel String Quartet - in the round

They introduced something unfamiliar and acutely stimulating as well as a typical Mendelssohn Quartet and Beethoven's last, at the Old Market in Hove, on Sunday, March 18.

This special new piece was placed first in the morning and was Schulhoff's first quartet for the mid-1920s, before the Prague-born composer died in a World War Two concentration camp.

Schulhoff had lessons from Debussy and Reger, lived in Germany for a period, the contemporary music he played as a pianist included quarter-tone pieces, and he was an early jazz enthusiast.

This Quartet No 1 was a concise and concentrated frisson of mystery and energy, quick in movements one and three, disturbing and hugely atmospheric in the slow second and fourth movements, with the use of ponticelli effects from the bow.

Yet if that sounds like a familiar template for an unintelligible and challenging soundscape, operating on the margins of intelligibility, this music, on the contrary, was directly expressive, appealing and accessible to perceive in its language.

Before long it became compelling listening - and watching, with the audience seated around the musicians, who were to swap seats for each subsequent work.

The placing of this work first immediately opened up the senses, almost the effect of smelling salts, and that was winningly effective and rewarding.

The Mendelssohn Quartet in E minor, Opus 44 No 2, is a serious work, written around the time of his honeymoon.

The deeply-felt slow third movement, as though addressing a profound mutual problem or discovery that simply had to be talked through or about, followed one of his quicksilver scherzi that translate so magically onto woodwind, as in his Midsummer Night's Dream music.

And so, after interval with fruit juice, sherry, cake and coffee, to Beethoven's last utterance among his Himalayan final quartet pronouncements, except his individual movement that replaced the Grosse Fugue finale in his Opus 130 quartet.

This one in F, Opus 135, was also most arresting in its scherzo, a vivace, and the last word but the composer who perfected, if not invented, the fast and witty movement of supreme dynamism.

It ended quietly, in Beethoven's most telling pay-off mode, and every ear knew it was in the presence of one of the greatest musical minds. And the penny dropped precisely whence came Mendelssohn's inspiration for his own scherzi.

He would have known this work.

The Henschel Quartet added, as a deserved encore, another scherzo, that from Jean Francais' third quartet.

The ensemble comprises violist Monika Henschel and her younger twin brothers, violinists Christoph (first) and Markus (second).

Afterwards, I spoke to cellist Mathias Beyer-Karlshoj, who is based in Copenhagen, although from Essen, while the others are based in Munich, although from near Stuttgart.

When the Henschels sought a replacement cellist, he was introduced to them by his grandfather, Franz Beier, an eminent musicologist and editor who was among those to have attempted to complete Mozart's now famous, unfinished Requiem.

He explained: "Someone introduced us to Schulhoff's Sextet and we wondered what else he had written.

"When we discovered this quartet six months ago, we knew it was not often played and we wanted to include it in our programmes to contrast what the quartet medium has been able to express since the Last Quartets of Beethoven.

"Because it's so different it fits with it extremely well. We've played it 10 times, now."

One again, the sheer precision and depth of this German quartet's playing impressed and is the obvious fruit of their being together now for 13 years.