Music, Dance Reviews : American Works by Chester Quartet

Playing on the “Rediscover America” section of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series, Sunday afternoon at the Southwest Museum, a young American ensemble, the Chester String Quartet, resuscitated neglected works by Charles Griffes and Walter Piston.

Written in, respectively, 1918 and 1933, Griffes’ “Two Sketches Based on Indian Themes” and Piston’s First Quartet are eminently worth reviving, for their intrinsic qualities as well as their place in North American musical chronology.

As played with irrepressible energy and unflagging good taste by the latest members of the 12-year-old Chester ensemble--both first and second violinists are new since the group’s 1988 visit here--Griffes’ colorful, compressed, pungent and splendidly lyrical pieces can only add conviction to one’s growing respect for that short-lived composer’s oeuvre . The American Indian elements in the pieces are minimal, merely providing a spark for Griffes’ kaleidoscopic imagination.

Piston’s buoyantly neoclassical Quartet No. 1, serious but engaging, songful and constrained, showed in its best aural light by the handsome resources of tone, technique and intelligence of these four players--violinists Fritz Gearhart and Kathryn Votapek, violist Ronald Gorevic and cellist Thomas Rosenberg, all members of the faculty at Indiana University in South Bend.

Similarly high standards also characterized the ensemble’s controlled but heartfelt performance of Dvorak’s Tenth Quartet (in E-flat, Opus 51) and its tight-knit, stylish and immaculate reading of Beethoven’s Quartet in G, Opus 18, No. 2.

As is not always the case, the latest Historic Sites locale, the west gallery at the 80-year-old Southwest Museum--overlooking a colorful neighborhood as well as the Pasadena Freeway--turned out to be acoustically friendly and grateful to the sound of strings, and comfortable for listeners.

Now, some generous patron ought to donate the funds for a much-needed expansion of the parking facilities. Parking on steep hills is dangerous.