MUSIC REVIEW : Cherubini Quartet in Dazzling Local Debut

Germany’s Cherubini String Quartet certainly does not accept the stereotype of chamber music as fragile stuff for finicky aesthetes. Its local debut, Tuesday at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena for Chamber Music in Historic Sites, was a marvel of big, heaving sounds and fierce passions.

This is an ensemble--violinists Christoph Poppen and Harold Schoneweg; violist Hariolf Schlichtig; cellist Manuel Fischer-Dieskau, the son of famed baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau--that would rather risk exaggeration than allow any point of contrast to pass understated. Whatever else they may be, they are never boring or convictionless.

This approach worked best in Beethoven’s Opus 95, the “Serioso” Quartet. The players caught all the volatile shifts of expression with sympathetic flair, hammering out the tense furies and sinking into elegant brooding with equal assurance. They made the most of every nuance, supporting the musical scenario with an abundance of articulative, rhythmic and dynamic variety.

Having given away the interpretive store in their Beethoven, the Cherubinis were left with nowhere to go but over the top in Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. Never in short supply, this piece is making such a chain of appearances this season that for all of its wonders its length is becoming its most striking characteristic.

That was true of ardent and arduous account offered here. The ensemble pressed its rich, imposing sound into buzzing stridency at climaxes, seized every opportunity for expressive variation, and still came up with little more than a long bath in emotional waters.

Mozart’s Quartet in G, K. 387, was the nicely detailed, somewhat astylistic opener. Poppen could not resist touches of portamento sweetening and his loud sniffing was more distracting here than in the turmoils of Beethoven and Schubert, but the playing proved otherwise warm, affectionate and as alert to architecture as to sentiment.

Cherubini would seem an odd namesake for a string quartet, but this one is recording his works in the medium, and offered the Scherzo from his Quartet No. 1 in encore. It suggests a wild range of other composers and styles in a surprisingly cheeky showpiece.