Five String Quartets on CD

After 22 years with RCA, the only label for which it has ever recorded, the Guarneri Quartet has switched to Philips. The group’s debut under these new auspices pairs (as usual) Dvorak’s “American” Quartet and Smetana’s “From My Life” (Philips 420 803, CD).

Simultaneously, RCA has reissued in its midpriced “Gold Seal” CD series (6263) the Guarneri’s “American” Quartet, initially released in 1972. The differences are considerable, but either way, the playing is magnificent.

The current Dvorak is somewhat more tautly inflected, less intent on (perhaps less capable of producing) sheer beauty of sound than the older version.

In the matter of coupling, few listeners will be able to resist RCA’s: the 1971 Guarneri-Artur Rubinstein Dvorak Piano Quintet, a gorgeously expansive reading that also manages to throw off an abundance of dramatic sparks.

Philips’ “From My Life” has as principal competition the 1966 Guarneri version, not as yet on compact disc. The approach in both is as grandly theatrical as the work itself, but today’s Guarneri produces a leaner, yet less focused ensemble tone than its own younger self.

The departure of its flagship chamber ensemble has evidently inspired RCA to pay some attention to the treasures reposing in its vaults. It has come up with the Guarneri’s six Mozart string quintets recorded live at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1984 and 1985 with, variously, violists Steven Tenenbom, Kim Kashkashian and Ida Kavafian.

The playing projects a degree of vivacity, a heatedness that has rarely emerged from the ensemble’s studio recordings. There are even some uncharacteristic intonational lapses, chiefly in K. 406 and K. 593 (coupled on Red Seal 7771), which serve to further humanize performances that are, in all, splendidly involved and virile, in contrast to the often preciously pretty stuff that has represented the Guarneri view of Mozart for the better part of the quartet’s life.

The other quintets are coupled as follows: K. 174 and K. 516 (Red Seal 7770, CD), K. 515 and K. 614 (Red Seal 7772, CD).

RCA also has a winning entry from a relatively new group, the Virginia-based Audubon String Quartet (Red Seal 7719, CD). Its robust, rich-toned, superbly balanced work was displayed here last fall at a Da Camera Society concert.

The centerpiece on that occasion, as on this debut recording, was the First Quartet of Peter Schickele, PDQ Bach’s serious (but by no means solemn) alter ego.

Subtitled “American Dreams,” it is an immensely attractive, coherent amalgam of square-dance and American Indian tunes, jazz, birdcalls and heaven knows what else--all of it accessible without being simplistic. A most valuable addition to the slender catalogue of worthwhile string quartets by American composers.

The companion piece is the often atonal, consistently faceless note-spinning of the Quartet No. 6 of another (older) American composer, Ezra Laderman.

Michael Tippett’s Fourth String Quartet (1978) is given its overdue recorded premiere by its dedicatees, Britain’s Lindsay Quartet (ASV 608, CD). In one four-part movement, it is a stunning work, with the slow third section--a succession of intricate violin duets and a broad cello solo--making a particularly powerful impression even on first hearing.

The Lindsays play the work with terrific propulsiveness and lyricism and are equally convincing in the work with which it is joined here, the darkly enigmatic Third Quartet of Benjamin Britten, which grows more comprehensible--and moving--with each successive interpretation.

In disdaining the cut-and-slash approach once considered appropriate to Bartok’s music, the Chilingirian Quartet, another excellent British ensemble, goes rather too far in the opposite direction in the first volume (Chandos 8588, CD) of its projected traversal of the composer’s six quartets. It produces interpretations of Nos. 1 and 2 that are somewhat lacking in gutsiness and size.

Austria’s youthful Hagen Quartet is joined by Eduard Brunner, principal clarinetist of the Bavarian Radio Symphony, in the quintets of Mozart and Weber, both played with neatly meshed ensemble and sweetness of tone (DG 419-600, CD). Not flashily dramatic interpretations but, rather, comfortably ingratiating and, one suspects, durable ones.