Music Reviews : Sharon Quartet in a Solid U.S. Debut

Musical styles change, evolve and reshape themselves--but slowly. At this moment, American audiences are moving from a preference for fat-toned orchestras to one for more transparent-sounding ensembles. In the arena of string quartets, we may be going in the other direction.

The Sharon Quartet, making its United States debut on a Chamber Music in Historic Sites event in the Viennese Room of the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, reminded us that quirky, idiosyncratic string-quartet playing, though apparently an anachronism, may soon come back into fashion.

It did so with distinction.

Founded eight years ago by four native Romanians now residing in Western Europe, the Sharon ensemble--violinists Gil Sharon and Rodica-Daniela Ciocoiu, violist Georg Haag and cellist Catalin Ilea--is a quartet of strong technical resources and measurable accomplishment.

For certain listeners, those resources may be too heavily weighted with rich tone, abundant vibrato and a 20th-Century range of moods. For others, those very qualities are the group’s strengths.

In an evening of exuberant, aggressive performances presented by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, Tuesday night, the Sharon’s final work, Schubert’s “Rosamunde” Quartet, D. 804, made the most sense and most effectively touched the hearer.

Here was a full palette of tone-colors, wide-ranging dynamics and cherishable projection of the composer’s emotional subtext. Here was a musical scenario of real conviction and broad humanity. Were there miscalculations of pitch and color, passages of intonational fogginess? Most assuredly. Did they matter? Not a lot, and not in this genuinely Schubertian context.

Even so, similar color-miscalculations and pitch-vagueness surfaced with some frequency in Haydn’s Quartet in C, Opus 76, No. 3, and in Beethoven’s Quartet in G, Opus 18, No. 2.

The sound-package in which the Haydn work came wrapped may have seemed excessive in terms of linear integrity and ideal simplicity. Nevertheless, the musical message emerged with potency. Similarly, there were mechanical details that kept the G-major Quartet of Opus 18 from its most direct rhetoric, yet there were also many moments in which it spoke convincingly.

The controversy will no doubt go on. In the meantime, a return visit from this gifted ensemble would not be unwelcome.