No-Name Quartet Debuts at Doheny Mansion

The Quartet Sine Nomine--literally, Quartet Without a Name--from Switzerland, a nation we seldom (perhaps out of ignorance) associate with world-class music making, made a memorable U.S. debut Friday for the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series at the Doheny Mansion in downtown Los Angeles.

In existence with its present membership for a decade, the quartet--violinists Patrick Genet and Francois Gottraux, violist Nicolas Pache, cellist Marc Jaermann, all in their early 30s--presented a dare-all program in consistently distinguished fashion.

It is rare to hear on one evening two such physically demanding works as the Second Quartet (“Intimate Pages”) of Janacek and Schubert’s vast Quartet in G, D. 887.

The Lausanne-based ensemble not only had the notes in hand (their intonation could be the envy of any quartet) but also presented the unique mood of each of these magnificent monsters with finely gauged dynamics, rhythmic thrust and a superbly blended middleweight ensemble tone that remained lustrous and focused even amid Janacek’s most punishing sallies.

Particularly noteworthy was the characterful, secure playing of the inner voices, whose mettle Janacek takes every opportunity to test.

Schubert’s last quartet was in all respects splendid in the hands of these artists: dramatic, energetically paced and grandly scaled, yet with the reflective moments, such as the heart-stopping trio of the Scherzo, set forth with infinite delicacy.

Throughout this nourishing program--which opened with a blithe, agile reading of Haydn’s Quartet in G, Opus 76, No. 1--the Quartet Sine Nomine showed that passion and polish need not be mutually exclusive virtues.