Music and Dance Reviews : Stanford String Quartet at Japan America Theatre

The tiny audience attending the local debut of the Stanford String Quartet at the Japan America Theatre on Friday seemed more Stanford--the university--than string-quartet-oriented, as indicated by overheard conversation, some of it in competition with the music.

Formed in 1983 as a resident ensemble at the university, the SSQ commands attention by the presence of two respected veterans: first violinist Andor Toth and violist Bernard Zaslav. Their younger colleagues are second violinist Zoya Leybin and cellist Stephen Harrison. According to the evidence presented, they have yet to achieve ensemble cohesiveness.

On this occasion, they took us on a bumpy ride, beset by intonational slips, through Schumann’s Quartet in A and a reasonably polished traversal of the Third “Rasumovsky” Quartet of Beethoven, which generated little heat until the final pages, too late to mitigate the effects of a notoriously listless minuet.

In between came the recent Quartet No. 10 of that most engaging Stanford alumnus, William Bolcom. But this work outlasts its welcome before its arch-structure has reached the keystone, i.e., midpoint, via a gratingly repetitious “molto intenso” section, which startled into grumbling consciousness an elderly neighbor who had been sound asleep to that point.

Bolcom’s opening movement--a sort of flyweight Bartokian Nachtmusik-- and finale, varying the opening with catchy Middle-Eastern modalities and a reminiscence of the Stravinsky Concerto for Strings, are the seeds of a far better piece.