MUSIC REVIEWS : KRONOS QUARTET AT SCHOENBERG HALL

Over the years, we have come to expect much of the Kronos Quartet. Seldom, however, is a concert of contemporary music so unreservedly rewarding--in repertory as in performance--as that offered by the Kronos Saturday evening at Schoenberg Hall, UCLA.

The generous, tightly constructed program included new and old works. However, Bartok’s Third Quartet (1927) and Silvestre Revueltas’ Fourth (1932), superficially at least, shared much with Alfred Schnittke’s Third Quartet (1983) and Scott Johnson’s “Bird in the Domes” (1986).

The latter, written for Kronos by the New York-based composer, was heard in its local premiere. The mood varies from nervous scampering to subdued modal meditation, but underlying all is a bluesy Angst. Self-important repetition lessened its impact, but the austere Kronos interpretation enforced respect.

Kronos has been playing Schnittke’s intense, complex Quartets this season, and with heroic concentration. The Soviet composer’s effort sounded less self-conscious than “Bird in the Domes,” in both technique and content, despite frequent quotation, and it benefits from greater compression.

Revueltas’ “Musica de Feria” Quartet achieves a quasi-folkloric spontaneity within a compact, clearly shaped single movement. It proved a worthy revival and a fitting programmatic bookend with the Bartok, played with unrivaled attention to stylistic nuance and ensemble unanimity.

As usual, there was a joker in the Kronos deck.

“White Man Sleeps” by South African composer Kevin Volans is a sort of minimalist hoedown, based on native musics. Relying largely on rhythmic elaboration for its effect, it evinced a buoyant, even playful spirit and a sense of discretion about proportions.