Music Reviews : Shanghai Quartet, David Tanenbaum at Beckman

There was something for everyone, including a measure of disappointment, at the latest Coleman Concert on Sunday afternoon at Beckman Auditorium. The collaboration of the Shanghai String Quartet and guitarist David Tanenbaum, attractive in prospect, sounded under-rehearsed and ill-considered in practice.

Their best combined effort came in the West Coast premiere of Roberto Sierra’s “Triptico.” The atmospheric soundscape begins with a movement of elegant night-music, peaks in a high-energy pizzicato movement, and dwindles away in coloristic noodling. Except in the diffuse finale, the performance was balanced and purposeful.

The following account of the popular Fandango from Boccherini’s Fourth Guitar Quintet, however, was little short of disastrous. What could be heard from Tanenbaum sounded blunt when it wasn’t insecure, ensemble was tentative and the misguided editorial and performance decisions culminated in cellist Kathe Jarka’s arhythmical attempt to shake castanets like a rattle.

At the end of the program was Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s warm, fluid Quintet, a minor masterwork at the pinnacle of the conservative guitar repertory that blossomed under Segovia’s influence. Tanenbaum’s recourse to amplification solved the balance problems, but at the price of cold, uneven sound, and the ensemble union of guitar and quartet was still shaky.

The quartet--violinists Wei-Gang Li and Hong-Gang Li, violist Zheng Wang, and Jarka--opened with Mozart’s Quartet in D, K. 575. Here the playing was sunny, fluent and polished almost to the point of blandness.

Zhou Long’s “Song of the Ch’in” again proved an engaging point of ethnic reference and a formidable ensemble challenge--less vivid, perhaps, than in the courtyard of the Pacific Asia Museum last October, but still a sonic tour de force.