MUSIC REVIEW : Angeles Quartet in Ebell Concert

On Wednesday evening the young, L.A.-based Angeles String Quartet joined the posh lineup of imported groups that are the bread and butter of the Music Guild series at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. The locals did themselves proud.

The focal point of the program involved an ex-local, Claudine Carlson, who applied her cultivated mezzo-soprano to Respighi’s faintly Wagnerian--via Schoenberg’s “Verklate Nacht”--contribution to the slender repertory of vocal chamber music, “Il Tramonto.”

Any hint of mawkishness in Respighi’s 1918 setting of an Italian translation of Shelley’s poem “Sunset” was avoided in her cool, commanding interpretation. The singer resourcefully explored a dynamic range that resides between piano and mezzo-forte, projecting within those limitations a quite astonishing variety of vocal and verbal color. Carlson continues to do difficult things in quiet, expert, profoundly satisfying fashion.

Carlson’s buttery vocalism was accompanied with fittingly subdued, elegant playing by the Angeles members, violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Denbow and cellist Stephen Erdody.

The large audience, while appreciative of Carlson’s efforts, might have responded more keenly had Respighi’s vaporous charms not been preceded by another work predicated on restraint--and a fadeaway finale: Mendelssohn’s youthful A-minor Quartet, Opus 13. Good music, questionable programming.

The evening’s low-key mood was maintained in its second half, with the Angeles’ performance of the First “Rasumovsky” Quartet of Beethoven, which was characterized by control, balanced ensemble and sweetness of tone.

It is hardly a dramatic work and the players wisely avoided firing it up. The result proved more than usually Classical in effect, and not at all displeasing.

A touch more emotional heat, a bit of sonic boom would, however, have been welcome.