MUSIC REVIEWS : SUMMERFEST ’86 IN FINAL CONCERTS

The ideal string quartet would combine an abundant resonance of sound, splendid but internalized technical skills and the broadest emotional range. Its four players would be equals in musical thought, partners in building balances, architects of sound structures.

Such quartets do exist, of course, but they all have names. One that approaches the ideal, but has no name, is the quartet that appeared on the closing event Sunday night at UC San Diego of Summerfest ‘86, the chamber music series from the La Jolla Chamber Music Society.

Violinists Masuko Ushioda and Gyorgy Pauk, violist Heiichiro Ohyama and cellist Ronald Leonard--yes, the last two are principals of the Los Angeles Philharmonic--made up this ad-hoc ensemble. In the first half of the final concert, in Mandeville Auditorium, they gave an urgent, full-blooded and poignant reading of Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8.

Then, to end the festival, the violinists changed places and all four players joined pianist David Golub in a splendidly virtuosic and deeply characterized performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat. Indeed, both performances were reminders of the power of music to touch the listener.

At the beginning of this farewell appearance, Ushioda with pianist Jeffrey Kahane put the stamp of musical seriousness and immaculate execution on the evening with an account of Beethoven’s Sonata in A minor, Opus 23, full of authority, grace and pointed character.

Sunday afternoon at the penultimate festival event, held in St. James-by-the-Sea Church in downtown La Jolla, what seemed to be the second team offered a program devoted to works for keyboard and winds by Vivaldi, Beethoven, Poulenc and Brahms.

Vivaldi’s Sonata a due in A minor and Beethoven’s Trio in G (1786) proved to be pleasant novelties of no abiding strengths. Though carefully performed by ensembles including flutist Damian Bursill-Hall, bassoonist Dennis Michel, cellist Margaret Moores, harpsichordist Karen Follingstad and pianist Edith Orloff, these pieces seldom engaged the interest.

In the Sextet for piano and winds by Poulenc, the acoustical character of the sanctuary--at once overbright and mushy--as well as the participants’ penchant for overplaying and for ignoring dynamic niceties quite clobbered the Gallic lightness we had thought was indestructible in the work.