MUSIC REVIEW : Mischa Would Have Been Proud

Somewhere, the late Mischa Schneider must have been smiling Sunday afternoon when the chamber ensemble named in his honor played a multifaceted concert at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Music for Mischa--named by its founder, cellist Robert Martin, as a tribute to his mentor, who was cellist with the Budapest Quartet for 38 years--traversed the pitfalls of diverse styles while presenting a program full of intelligence and passion.

The group--violinists Margaret Batjer and Sheryl Staples, violist Michael Nowak and Martin--began with Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat, the last of his Opus 64, in a pristine, gently amiable reading. In this work, as throughout the program in Founders Hall, the musicians displayed remarkable agreement of phrasing, direction and sentiment, supported by technical equality.

First chair passed from Staples to Batjer for the Quartet in C, Opus 49, by Shostakovich. Batjer proved to be a strong leader, setting an atmosphere of tense, bitter humor for the first movement, counterpoising her cohorts’ fast, terse playing with an appropriately uncomfortable melody in the third movement. Solos by Nowak and Martin emerged from the score’s bare-bones texture with an apt, anxiety-laden somber quality.

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Joseph Genualdi, violinist with the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, turned violist to join the regulars for Brahms’ String Quintet No. 2, Opus 111, a work Brahms once thought would be his last. Despite the newness of their collaboration, the five players maintained notable unity of purpose, whether mustering fiery energy while bringing ideas to logical fruition, or offering a dark and ardent lament.

During the opening Allegro, Martin--who moonlights as assistant dean of humanities at UCLA--made his impassioned point from within the busy, forte accompaniment and paved the way for the violists’ warm-toned, eminently balanced duet. Mischa would have approved.