Guarneri Quartet Returns to Ambassador

In terms of individual technique, ensemble unanimity and beauty of tone, there isn’t a string quartet to match the Guarneri. We’ve known that since 1964, when violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violist Michael Tree and cellist David Soyer began to spread their soothing gospel.

Yet the degree to which those qualities are present--and remain consistent--can still come as a surprise when experiencing the first, cushioned downbeat of a Guarneri Quartet concert. As was the case on Thursday at Ambassador Auditorium, with the loftily serene opening measures of Beethoven’s Quartet in D, Opus 18, No. 3. It was clearly going to be an evening of supreme Guarneri, which is not necessarily the same thing as an evening of supreme musical communication.

While it may not be the most enlightened stylistic tack, Classical Beethoven played in full-blown Romantic style--with long-breathed phrases, plenty of portamento and fast, insistent vibrato--hardly hurt the ears or offended the sensibilities.

But when there is barely any shifting of stylistic gears for music written a century-and-a-quarter later, the Second Quartet of Leos Janacek (“Intimate Letters”), the composer’s message is compromised.

Janacek’s jagged edges, his hysteria, his earthiness, the disjunctiveness of structure and mood which form the essence of his uniqueness were buffed, harnessed, ultimately negated by the velvet tones and emotional equanimity of the performance. It is unlikely that one will ever again hear the work played with such polish and technical facility. Or so narcissistically.

Composing and performing styles did ultimately fuse, in a loving traversal of the very pretty Mendelssohn Quartet in A minor, Opus 13. But for the evening’s sole instance of gutsiness one had to wait for an encore: a blazing, uninhibited and ever so slightly askew charge through the finale of Haydn’s “Rider” Quartet.