Music Reviews : Angeles Quartet in Debut Performance at Gindi

While first impressions of a string quartet may not be definitive, they are unlikely to be deceiving.

Perfect intonation, natural balances, clean attacks are accomplishments not lightly achieved. Yet they have come in a remarkably short time for the Angeles Quartet, which made its local concert-hall debut at Gindi Auditorium on Sunday evening.

Formed last November by musicians familiar locally in other performing contexts, the Angeles Quartet--violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Dembow, cellist Stephen Erdody--showed a degree of unanimity and polish that might be envied by quartets with years of experience. And they made music, not just notes.

Of course, this was a calling-card program, honed presumably over a longer period than an established touring group could afford. Still, the signs are so positive that one can’t help predicting the brightest of futures.

Haydn’s achingly sad-sweet (for its first two movements) Quartet in D, Opus 20, No. 4, was a model of stylish suavity in these players’ hands, with the concluding movements equally notable for bright, thrusting tone and pinpoint execution.

The sprawling, inchoate First Quartet of Bartok is an unlikely choice for making a big impression. But it worked. Not only as stimulation for jaded ears, but for showing that the music can cast a powerful spell when its performers are intent on projecting textural clarity rather than approaching it from the feverish viewpoint of later Bartok.

Which is not say that this was a low-key interpretation--or one that tried to minimize the composer’s struggles with a finale that has at least as many false endings as Mahler’s First Symphony.

If interest sagged somewhat during Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet, attribute it to the fact that some of us have heard the “Harp” a few too many times of late, and to the impression that violinist Lenski here did not consistently match her colleagues in temperament or projection of tone.

That shadow was immediately dispelled with an encore: a dazzlingly deft and witty reading of the finale from Haydn’s Quartet in C, Opus 33, No. 3.

Let’s hope that the community will support these excellent musicians--not just with applause but with prestigious engagements, to allow them a longer and more active life than most of their local predecessors have enjoyed.