MUSIC REVIEW : Mann in Command During Juilliard String Performance

The Juilliard String Quartet brought its seasoned wares to Ambassador Auditorium yet again on Wednesday, trailing some speculation that first violinist Robert Mann might be winding down his activities with the ensemble over which he has presided for the 46 years of its existence.

The speculation stemmed from some less-than-satisfactory personal outings in recent seasons, without reflecting on the undiminished skills of his much younger colleagues, second violinist Joel Smirnoff, violist Samuel Rhodes and cellist Joel Krosnick.

After Wednesday’s program, one could only thank the benevolent heavens that the 73-year-old Mann was still in charge.

If there was an ill-tuned phrase here, the fleeting suggestion of flagging vitality there, the overall impression remained one of mastery over both his instrument and his material.

And the material was daunting indeed, beginning with Haydn’s sad, secretive Quartet in D minor, Opus 103, the composer’s final, unfinished effort in the medium he had virtually invented a half-century earlier.

Then, with less a change in mood than in compositional style, the Juilliard revived one of its old signature pieces, Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite.”

This gnarled exercise in post-Romantic agony sighed, whispered, thundered, screamed, sang and, in the scurrying measures of the bat-infested Allegro misterioso, very nearly frightened in these players’ inspired hands.

Finally, Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden,” tediously overexposed on local stages in recent seasons, emerged no less effective than the Berg in the Juilliard’s rough, dare-all traversal: faster, slower, louder, softer, more gripping than might seem possible with such a familiar score.