MUSIC REVIEW : Cleveland Quartet, En Route to O.C., Shines in San Diego

When the Cleveland Quartet performs, it is difficult to dismiss the question, “Does it get any better?”

Sunday night at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, the group’s refinement, precision and unfailing lyricism proved an irresistible combination of virtues. The Cleveland will play a different program tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, co-sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society and the Laguna Chamber Music Society.

In La Jolla, the elegant, program-opening Haydn Quartet in D, Op. 76, No. 5, could not have been more stylish. Though the set of Stradivarius instruments on which the Cleveland plays contributed to the quartet’s mellow, exquisitely focused sonority, the players’ discerning approach made this late Haydn opus sing. They balanced the work’s exuberance with a lucid texture that few ensembles are able to muster.

Much of the Cleveland’s enviable ensemble work results from strong leadership at both ends of the spectrum.

Cellist Paul Katz, one of the founding members, propels the group from below with authority and a consistently focused timbre. Violinist William Preucil, the newest member, brings brilliance and vitality to the top; he turns the densest onslaught of figuration into a shapely phrase without dropping a 1/32-note.

Violinist Peter Salaff and violist James Dunham complete the group, which is the Eastman School of Music’s resident string quartet.

The Cleveland made an excellent case for Prokofiev’s infrequently performed B-minor Quartet, Op. 50, No. 1. Like Prokofiev’s G-minor Piano Concerto and his early opera “The Gambler,” much of the B-minor Quartet hurtles forward on the nervous energy of jaunty, motoric iterations. But in the long final movement, the composer settles into his wingback chair and weaves a probing philosophical argument.

If the players attacked the busy neoclassical rhetoric of the opening movement with abandon, they explored the finale’s grave introspection with compelling conviction.

In the wake of the Prokofiev, Dvorak’s Quartet in A-flat, Op. 105, seemed disappointingly lightweight, an observation confirmed by the Cleveland’s brilliant encore, the Schubert “Quartettsatz.”

* The Cleveland Quartet plays quartets by Mozart, Prokofiev and Beethoven tonight at 8 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $10 to $20. Co-sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society and the Laguna Chamber Music Society. Information: (714) 646-6277.