CHAMBER MUSIC: AD HOC GROUPS VS. ENSEMBLES

Virtuoso instrumentalists, the stars of their profession, have their moments of humility. They prove it by joining or forming ad-hoc chamber ensembles, subjugating their egos to the demands of the faintly mystical concept known as ensemble .

Sometimes it works; more often, it does not. The individual personalities are simply too strong. For proof of that particularly pudding, one need refer only to the several stellar ensembles in which Jascha Heifetz took part and dominated with his unquenchable individuality.

Then again, the star-oriented ensemble may fail to reflect any sort of personality, as is the case with the one heard in Schubert’s massive Quartet No. 15 in G, D. 887 (CBS 42134, LP or CD). The stars--culprits, perhaps--are first violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Their colleagues are artists who make their livings playing chamber music: second violinist Daniel Phillips and violist Kim Kashkashian. Put ‘em all together and you get a lot of lovely tone, all the technique in the world and some remarkably cautious, tepid Schubert.

It’s revelatory, then, to turn to a real chamber ensemble, the London-based Chillingirian Quartet, in the same music. This is hardly one of the field’s supergroups, and the group’s playing is by no means as polished as that of CBS team. But the Brits play with fire, commitment and a probing intensity that bespeaks long--and specialized--experience.

The Chillingirian’s G-major Quartet comes as part of a two-CD set (Nimbus 5048/9) that also includes forceful versions of Schubert’s two other major, mature quartets, the works in A minor and D minor (“Death and the Maiden”), which nonetheless suffer by comparison to the more technically fluent and no less dramatic readings by Vienna’s Alban Berg Quartet on Angel.

The Amadeus Quartet has, during the 40 years of its existence, never found it necessary to make a personnel change: an endurance record unlikely ever to be broken. And that the quartet is still capable of fresh, penetrating and soulfully rugged interpretations (elegant it never was) of familiar material is proven again in the group’s latest recorded version--the quartet’s fourth in as many decades--of the great Schubert C-major Quintet, in which the group is joined by youthful British cellist Robert Cohen (Deutsche Grammophon 419 611, CD).

More Schubert, the seraphic Piano Trio in B-flat, from the excellent, imaginative French ensemble unimaginatively named Les Musiciens (Harmonia Mundi 901048, CD). This is a big-toned, broadly paced, dramatic reading that has little to do with Robert Schumann’s characterization of this work as “feminine.” There is a generous filler, too, in the form of Schubert’s A-major Sonata, D. 664, played with rather more rubato than this sweetly fragile music can bear, by the pianist of Les Musiciens, Jean-Claude Pennetier.

Hungary’s venerated Tatrai Quartet is nearing the end of its 20-year project of recording all the quartets of Joseph Haydn and many of the performances are available on Hungaroton compact discs. Among the most recently released in the United States are the most important of the early works, the six so-called “Sun” quartets of Opus 20 (1132/33, two CDs), and the last major collection, the six quartets of Opus 76, which contains the familiar nickname pieces: the “Emperor,” “Sunrise” and “Quintet” quartets (12812/13, two CDs).

The Tatrai foursome plays all these works with tremendous spirit and skill. While the group’s sound may be considered somewhat old fashioned in its reliance on “expressive” vibrato, there is ample compensating vivacity in the group’s interpretations. Both sets, it should be noted, date back to the early years of the Hungaroton Haydn project. The more recent products--for instance, the Opus 71 and 74 quartets (12246/7, two CDs)--show a deterioration of skills, reflected in occasionally imprecise ensemble and intonational lapses. Nothing alarming, but sufficient to caution the listener not to rush out and buy the Tatrai’s Haydn en bloc .

The Manchester-based Lindsay Quartet, which has given us so-so Beethoven and Bartok in the past, emerges anew with some deliciously energetic and sharply executed Haydn, the three quartets of his Opus 54 (ASV Recordings 582, CD, a Harmonia Mundi import), of which the first, in the key of G, is one of the composer’s chamber masterpieces.

BRIEFLY NOTED--AND RECOMMENDED: Mozart’s glorious Trio in B-flat for clarinet, viola and piano on the tiny Italian Dynamic label (U20, CD), a Hungaroton import, coupled with the composer’s two Duos for Violin and Viola, all very stylishly executed by clarinetist Antony Pay, violinist Mariana Sirbu, violist Bruno Giuranna and pianist Derek Han; the two Piano Quartets of Mozart, in suave readings by pianist Jacques Rouvier, violinist Jean-Jacques Kantorow, violist Vladimir Mendelssohn, and cellist Mari Fujiwara (Denon 33CO-1374); a generous CD coupling of Brahms’ luscious Clarinet Quintet and the least hectoring and pretentious of his string quartets, the work in B-flat, Opus 67, in refreshingly brisk, bright-faced interpretations by the Talich Quartet of Prague, with French clarinetist Pascal Moragues (Pyramid 13489, CD, a Harmonia Mundi import).