Music : Kronos Quartet Offers Eclectic Versions of Schnittke Works at Wadsworth

The Kronos Quartet is probably the only ensemble for which Schnittke could be considered conventional repertory. Saturday at the Wadsworth Theater, the veteran sonic voyagers surrounded Schnittke’s Quartet No. 2 with six typically eclectic works written for them.

Both halves of the long program ended with a dramatic, electronically augmented piece. “Spectre,” by Canadian composer John Oswald, is a bravura exercise in phase shifting, piling up simple gestures into maelstroms of sound.

Istvan Marta’s “The Glassblower’s Dream” employs a tape featuring maniacal laughter. It also includes more conventional thematic material, to the point that the live quartet seemed thoroughly subsidiary to the canned proceedings, something the unbalanced amplification did nothing to change.

Even in the works without other effects, the amplification consistently seemed to suppress the efforts of first violinist David Harrington, though ironically it picked up his foot-tapping in the Agitato movement of the Schnittke, adding an unfortunate drum effect.

That aside, the Schnittke proved an emotionally gripping account, as much in its exhausted demise as in the rhythmically coruscating Agitato furies. Violinists Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud made its expansive case interpretively urgent and appropriately frayed in sound.

The group worked even more effectively on behalf of Peter Sculthorpe’s “Jabiru Dreaming.” A colorful pastoral in two movements, the piece has a compelling gentleness presented with real lyric charm.

Similar qualities were apparent in Dumisani Maraire’s “Mai Nozipo” (“Mother Nozipo”) and Foday Musa Suso’s “Tilliboyo” (“Sunset”). The former sounds like a set of African folk-song variations--almost Coplandesque in clarity--while the latter is a mostly pizzicato soundscape.

“The Dead Man,” by John Zorn, completed the printed agenda. Even dispersed in two portions, Zorn’s characteristic gathering of frenetic, scratchy sound bites outlasted its welcome in at least one quarter.

In encore, the group turned to pops as usual. Steven Mackey’s coy arrangement of Bo Diddley’s “Road Runner” made Kronos seem a pale imitation of the Turtle Island Quartet, while the energy in Jay Cloidt’s quotation-laden “Coal Cat Crush” was provided by taped drum machine.