Chamber Music Reviews : Subtle Shadings From the Fresk Quartet

One person’s forte is another’s mezzo-piano, and so on in every facet of the interpretation of music. The Fresk String Quartet of Stockholm, in a Music Guild concert at the Wilshire Ebell on Wednesday, offered everything it played within a small expressive framework, as if painting the music in miniature.

The quartet--violinists Lars Fresk and Hans-Erik Westberg, violist Lars-Gunnar Bodin and cellist Per-Goran Skytt--has had the same personnel since its inception more than 25 years ago. Unity, poise, polish and a small, mellow tone are its qualities.

Mozart’s String Quartet, K. 575, emerged proper and prim, with its dynamic contrasts slight, its melodies projected soberly. Mozart marks the beginning of the score sotto voce ; it seemed as if the players took that as direction for the entire score. It was all as dainty as a painted teacup.

The Sibelius String Quartet, Opus 56, revealed the ensemble’s easy virtuosity, in a focused, highly controlled reading. There wasn’t a vigorous attack, a weighty utterance in the whole performance. The music’s expressive hills and valleys became flattened out, the inner voices blended and subdued, its brooding Nordic profile as unremarkable as a Kansas plain.

The trills, tremolos, pizzicatos and muted passages of Ravel’s String Quartet became things to behold in themselves, precious, ever-so-subtly shaded objects. The group never seemed to take a phrase to its top, however, and the music, at times, threatened to blow away.