Dance and Music Reviews : Mischans Play Mesmerizing Brahms

If you had to pick one program to summarize all that’s so right with the Music for Mischa series at UCLA, the offering Thursday at Schoenberg Hall could be the one--intelligent, spirited, collegial playing of important yet not overheard music.

The big--really big--piece was Brahms’ Quintet in G, Opus 111. An intimate symphony, it provided the kind of virtuosic stretching that often brings out the best in ad-hoc ensembles.

The Mischans on this occasion were violinists Joseph Genualdi and Miwako Watanabe, violists Michael Nowak and John Graham, and cellist-director Robert Martin. They brought plenty of heat to the piece, applied with sophisticated purpose.

Consider just the leaping, sunny Allegro. In sheer exuberant athleticism the performance proved a breathtaking wonder, but beneath all the dash lay marvels of supple phrasing, the players taking up the lines with seamless grace, all while maintaining clear individual identity.

Add to that the darkling mysteries of the middle movements and the sass of the finale--all fully realized--and you have a truly memorable encounter with an infrequently met monument of the literature.

Ives’ First Quartet emerged with all its optimism intact, in a performance emphasizing integration over spiky independence. With the eccentricities suppressed, the bent hymn-tunes revealed a potential for almost Brahmsian warmth.

The opening Beethoven Trio in C minor, from Opus 9, seemed nervous at times, in an odd mix of fleet surface skimming and exaggerated drama. Watanabe, Nowak and Martin shared ideas readily, but the sound--particularly from the top--could be almost inarticulate in its feathery rushes.