MUSIC REVIEW : An Involving Concert by Fresk Quartet

Winter nights in Sweden may be forbidding, but they also offer ample opportunity to share secrets before roaring hearth fires. The Fresk Quartet reminded one listener of this Thursday evening in Artists Theatre at Laguna Beach High School.

The quartet--Lars Fresk and Hans-Erik Westberg, violins; Lars-Gunnar Bodin, viola; and Per-Goran Skytt, cello--began working together as friends almost three decades ago, during their student days at the College of Music in Stockholm. Thursday, as part of the Laguna Chamber Society series, they brought a collective, intimate understanding to a program of Berwald, Mozart and Shostakovich.

This was not a concert marked by delicate refinement. It was instead an involving experience. The ensemble imparted gritty sound and passionate direction to Berwald’s Quartet in E-flat, bringing frank lyricism to the adagio and joyful interplay to the scherzo.

The elegance and balance of Mozart’s Quartet in D, K. 575, took back seat to mood and lyricism. Comfort and familiarity oozed from the group’s leisurely unfolding andante, delivered with ease and the warm tone quality of musicians more at home with romantic excess than classical containment. Despite some inconsistencies of intonation between the violinists, the quartet related to one another as old friends, conveying true solace with the resolution of competing lines in the closing allegretto.

Only for Shostakovich’s third quartet did the four opt for variety in their sound, choosing a biting edge for the quarrelsome counterpoint of the opening movement, reverting to their characteristic warmth during interludes.

Ensemble work shone through precise staccato passages and stellar attention to nuance in the second movement. Most memorable was the adagio, which emerged as a series of haunting duets marked by Skytt’s dark, weighty voice.