Music Reviews : Arditti Quartet in Monday Evening Concert

It was a night of uncommon pleasures, the latest Monday Evening Concert. Britain’s Arditti Quartet gave performances of contemporary music--in Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art--that shouldn’t be soon forgotten.

A source of constant pleasure throughout the evening was the Arditti’s impeccable virtuosity. To hear this quartet play contemporary music is to know that most other such performances are mere approximations. The program was as impressive as the playing. One does not hesitate to call Alfred Schnittke’s String Quartet No. 2 (1980), in its Los Angeles premiere, a masterpiece. Its use of old Russian sacred chant and a glittering variety of coloristic ingenuities puts it firmly in the Russian nationalistic tradition. Its complex musical language--full of gnarling dissonance, polyrhythms, advanced instrumental techniques--is nevertheless readily accessible because of the music’s surface color and apparent emotionalism.

Conlon Nancarrow’s brief Quartet No. 3 (1987), also a local premiere, is an arresting exercise in proportional canon in which the players execute the same material in different, strictly ratioed, tempos.

The 15 brief movements of Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Officium Breve” (1988-89), in its U.S. premiere, combine original music with quotes from Webern and the composer Endre Szervansky; it ranges from ethereal reticence to agitated busyness to delicate, tonal sentiment. Dorrance Stalvey’s Quartet ‘89, a world premiere, is acerbic, discursive, frenetic in its quick juxtaposition of moods; its musical material is built from the players’ names.

To start things off, the Arditti gave a dazzling account of an American classic, Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Quartet (1931).