MUSIC REVIEWS : Vital Playing From Ysaye Quartet

Since first appearing locally in 1990, the Ysaye Quartet has evolved from an ensemble obsessed with delicacy of utterance and textural clarity to one whose work combines all the technical blandishments with a communicatively dramatic interpretive stance. The offerings by the French ensemble--violinists Christophe Giovaninetti and Luc-Marie Aguera, violist Miguel da Silva, cellist Michel Poulet--for a Chamber Music in Historic Sites audience in the Doheny Mansion on Friday were, simply put, superbly accomplished.

The “Dissonant” Quartet of Mozart emerged with all glories intact in a full-toned (no period influences within earshot) presentation, with loving attention to projecting the refined balances and lyric flow of the andante. And the third of Beethoven’s “Rasumovsky” Quartets proved both elegant and propulsive, with the Ysaye’s rapt playing of the lulling, rocking slow movement a high point.

It’s difficult to imagine the aged Gabriel Faure’s E-minor Quartet delivered with more affection and skill than it was Friday. Still, one wonders why it had to be played at all, what with its discursive chromatic noodling and insistent, purposeless rooting around in the instruments’ lower registers.