MUSIC REVIEWS : STRING QUARTET PLAYS SCHOENBERG

With an average age of less than 33 years, the four members of the decade-old American String Quartet are too young an ensemble to have had any direct connection with Arnold Schoenberg. Indeed, at the time the composer died, in the summer of 1951, only one of the members of the quartet had been born.

Nevertheless, this splendid ensemble--made up of violinists Mitchell Stern, Laurie Carney, Daniel Avshalomov and David Geber--revealed uncanny emotional identification and authentic directness of expression in its playing of two Schoenberg quartets (Nos. 3 and 1), Friday night at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC (the group was scheduled to play Nos. 4 and 2 on Saturday).

Apparently fresh revelations characterized the ensemble’s playing of the Quartet No. 3 (1927), a work combining integrated hyperactivity with musical weight.

The young American musicians delivered a followable ascent to that emotional plateau in the opening movement; all the nervous repose of the Adagio; the resumption of the climb in the Intermezzo, and all the teasing and bravado, as well as summing-up, in the finale. For once, the separate sections meshed in an apprehendable continuity.

In the even more densely packed First Quartet, which has been called the peak of Schoenberg’s post-Romantic writing, the American String Quartet led its listeners through all the mazes leading to that cathartic conclusion. And, on the way, produced perfectly handsome sounds as well as deep resonances of tone and feeling.