MUSIC REVIEWS : Camerata Performs at Newport; Angeles String Quartet on UCI Campus : The Angeles String Quartet offered an evening of stylistic diversity to close the UC Irvine chamber season.

The Angeles String Quartet closed the third UC Irvine Chamber Music season Friday night with a program that demanded facile leaps among diverse styles. The ensemble juggled the contrasts with ease.

Performing on campus in the Fine Arts Concert Hall, the four--violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erdody (the sole faculty member in the quartet)--opened with a clean and illuminating reading of Haydn’s “Sunrise” Quartet. Lenski’s warm, focused tone set the stage for a passionate allegro con Spirito characterized by deft balances and impeccable intonation. The musicians held admirable control over a myriad of soft shades in the tenuously moving adagio . They juxtaposed long intertwining lines with clipped precision in the finale.

Janacek’s first quartet, the “Kreutzer” (the composer’s own subtitle--a reference to Tolstoy, not Beethoven), offered marked contrast. This is a nervous work that interrupts lyricism with tense aggression, and that introduces themes only to have them fade in and out among diversions. It can easily become disjointed. Here, the ensemble moved naturally among potential pitfalls, maintaining logic and cohesion.

The Angeles Quartet is clearly an ensemble of sensitive musicians, each possessed of ample technical ability. Pianist Nina Scolnik--the UCI faculty member who organized the series--joined the group for the Piano Quintet by Schumann. The pianist provided lyric and unforced support most successful in the quiet sections of the second movement and the mysterious rumblings of the final allegro ma non troppo.

However, Scolnik could not muster sufficient power to match the expansive approach of her colleagues, and the larger-than-life pianistic lushness that serves this work so well was missing. Still, as a whole, the quintet’s impassioned use of rubato, adventuresome tempos and rhythmically emphatic melodies imparted an exciting conclusion to the season.