Music Reviews : American String Quartet at Ebell

The new season of Music Guild concerts in the Wilshire Ebell Theatre opened on Wednesday with a traditional--in the best sense--program, smartly presented by the New York-based American String Quartet.

The ensemble began with one of the deceptively demanding Opus 18 quartets of Beethoven. Its choice of the work in A major proved a wise one, displaying the group’s keen balance and buoyant rhythmicality. In the fetching Andante the Americans furthermore exhibited a degree of dynamic subtlety which too many of today’s quartets avoid in their desire to hurl the big tone out into often over-large halls.

The players--violinists Peter Winograd and Laurie Carney, violist Daniel Avshalomov, cellist David Geber--kept Classical priorities in order, moving the music at a smart clip, keeping ensemble tone light, without undue applications of thickening vibrato.

Likewise, the artists were not out to knock us senseless with the storms and stresses of Bartok’s Fourth Quartet. Its tense darkness became palpable in the Americans’ hands without their resorting to the string-ripping deemed necessary by certain supposed stylistic paragons.

The present performers balanced gut-clutching drama with broad lyricism, after the manner of the best Hungarian ensembles. The central slow movement, with its haunted moans and squiggles, proved especially effective in this context: an expression of four-part strength rather than the usual embellished cello solo.

Notably enhancing as well, throughout the Bartok and the subsequent, fizzy reading of the performers’ namesake composition, the “American” Quartet of Dvorak, was the contrast between Winograd’s intensely bright--at times to the point of wiriness--tone and the plush emanations of Carney’s instrument.

It should be reported that subtle changes have been wrought in the Wilshire Ebell: new (additional?) carpeting and more forward placement of the performers on the notoriously sound-sucking Ebell stage. From this listener’s seat, a dozen rows back at the left of the orchestra, there seemed to be more projective tone, more volume emerging from the stage than on past occasions, as well as increased room resonance.

The old house may have some life in it yet.