MUSIC REVIEW : Though Polished, Balanced, Angeles Quartet Lacks Fervor

Since its first concert in July, 1988, the Angeles Quartet has proved to be a group worth noticing. As demonstrated on a program for the Fullerton Friends of Music on Sunday, the quartet also has established a clear stylistic profile.

Impeccable execution, polished and balanced ensemble work, and unanimity of expression all characterized the playing of violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erdody at Sunny Hills High School here.

However, the members apparently have decided to weigh in on the side of interpretive understatement. While they play with emotion and commitment, it is all contained within a comparative reticence. There are few big, lush sounds or impassioned gestures.

And the unanimity comes at a cost: The players tend to refrain from making strong individual statements. At times, in fact, the ensemble sounds less like a group of four players than a violinist with three accompanists, though some works suffer less from this approach than others.

In Mozart’s Quartet in B-flat, K. 458 (“The Hunt”), Lenski provides sweet leadership in the sunny outer movements; evokes suavity and a tinge of regret in the minuet, and traces the outlines of nobility in grief in the slow movement.

Mendelssohn composed his Quartet No. 2 when he was 18, in the year in which Beethoven died. One can detect a homage to the older composer in a slow fugue of the songful second movement. But beyond that, the work shows Mendelssohn experimenting with classical forms. He ends the work unexpectedly, for instance, by reinvoking the slow movement.

The quartet members responded to the challenges with freshness and spontaneity, although the performance was briefly halted when one of the tuning pegs on Lenski’s violin apparently popped out. But they soon were able to resume without losing a sense of direction, cohesion and architecture.

They closed the program with a thoughtful performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in F, the first of the “Razumovsky” quartets. Here Erdody became more prominent, offering, within the stylistic confines of the group, an expressive profile. But the ensemble generally gave a bold and masterful response to the composer’s complex demands.