A week of stimulating chamber music performances in Canberra led up to Thursday night's recital by the Takacs Quartet.

On Tuesday night at the Ainslie Arts Centre, the youthful Kristian Winther (violin), Ioana Tache (violin), Alexina Hawkins (viola) and Thomas Marlin (cello) gave a concert titled be:longing/Shostakovich and played music by Purcell and Tchaikovsky, (with guests David Pereira and Tor Fromyhr) culminating in a breathtaking performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Third String Quartet.

The air was electric with the focus of the young musicians and the united desire to play fine music together as one. On Wednesday at the Wesley Music Centre, the audience heard Larry Sitsky, an eminent pianist and composer with a lifetime's experience, recreate the lost musical world of Anton Rubinstein. At 82, Sitsky embodies the principle that rigorous musical education lasts a lifetime and he performed the demanding program with exceptional articulation and true romantic extravagance.

So with these dynamic performances fresh in the mind, it was most intriguing to hear the legendary Takacs Quartet, and contemplate what it is that makes a chamber ensemble great. To my ears, the quartet really sounded at its best playing the work written for them by Carl Vine. Satisfying as the opening Haydn String Quartet in F major, Op.77 was, in Vine's String Quartet, Child's Play, I heard the musicians engage and strive together to really make this new music the means of communicating with the audience to deliver the composer's message.

Like the young musicians who made Shostakovich live so vibrantly in the intimacy of the Ainslie Arts Centre, Vine's music inspired the Takacs Quartet to play each other as well as the musical notation. Aspiring to this communal goal transformed the nature of the performance with tighter connections between the players, crisper timing and more sympathetic intonation.

Written in five movements, Child's Play evokes the early experience of Play, Concentration, Friendship, Sleep and Running. The sophistication and harmonic beauty of Sleep was greatly enhanced by violist Geraldine Walther's performance, and there were many audience comments in praise of this movement at interval.

Beethoven's String Quartet No.12 in E-flat major, Op. 127 (1825) suffered a little from the imbalance of the volume of the first violin dominating the opening movement rather than leading from a position embedded in the overall sound of the ensemble. Perhaps the tempo of the first two movements was a little slower than the composer intended, too, but the sweetness of the early part of the performance matched with the assertiveness of the allegro finale ensured that the Takacs Quartet gave us an experience of Beethoven's genius in one of his most delightful compositions.