Music Reviews : Bartok Quartet at Ford Amphitheatre

The Bartok Quartet of Budapest, beginning its three-concert, Los Angeles Philharmonic-sponsored series at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Monday, didn’t sound quite like the group that raised the roof of Gindi Auditorium early this year. The differences had less to do with artistry than with with the fact that the Ford does not have a roof.

Sound is projected and magnified by the cannonading Gindi acoustic, diminished and compacted at the out-of-doors, freeway-close Ford, although transparent, sound-reflective panels have neatly solved the problem of excessive sound dispersal.

In truth, the Bartok sounds realistically (and pleasingly) like a string quartet, rather than a string orchestra, at the Ford.

The program, in keeping with a format that will be adhered to on two subsequent Mondays, offered a quartet by Bartok (No. 3), preceded by an early Beethoven (Opus 18, No. 1) and followed by one of that composer’s middle-period “Rasumovsky” Quartets (Opus 59, No. 2).

One had to be impressed by the dancey bits and hints of lyricism these artists--violinists Peter Komlos and Geza Hargitai, violist Geza Nemeth, cellist Laszlo Mezo--were able to uncover amid the defiant crankiness of the Third Quartet of their namesake composer, Bela Bartok.

And ensemble mastery was evident in every measure of the second “Rasumovsky” quartet, most notably in the serene Adagio, for which the players adopted a particularly lightweight tone, but of such solidity that it hung, rather than dissipated, in the night air, and the restlessly syncopated third movement, which provided on this occasion an object lesson in four-part interaction.

One might have asked for cleaner attacks--perhaps, even (in this age of heightened stylistic awareness) less vibrato and shorter bow strokes--in the early Beethoven. But then one might also have asked for the moon, whose absence on this cool, cloudy evening could be lamented only by those dull souls for whom the exalted artistry of the Bartok Quartet didn’t suffice.