MUSIC REVIEW : Quartet Sine Nomine in a Coleman Matinee

A strong case of the blahs infected the local return by the Lausanne-based ensemble Quartet Sine Nomine Sunday afternoon.

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The quartet’s well-prepared, strong program--consisting of Haydn’s Quartet in C, Opus 9, No. 1, the Opus 3 Quartet by Alban Berg and Beethoven’s Opus 130, with the “Grosse Fuge”--apparently could not help this attack of uneventfulness. Nor could the patient-to-the-end, attentive Coleman Chamber Concerts audience.

Outside Beckman Auditorium at Caltech, the air was clear, the weather sunny. Inside, the atmosphere also had a sense of early spring. Alas, that meant, too, that focus and concentration became sometime things.

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Highly praised at its local debut two years ago for its passion and polish, the Quartet Sine Nomine from Switzerland--violinists Patrick Genet and Francois Gottraux; violist Nicolas Pache and cellist Marc Jaermann--this time around seemed to have left its passion outside the hall. Its technical polish appeared in place, all things mechanical operating at maximum efficiency. This is a quartet that thinks and plays together in an easy, unforced ensemble, and one for whom intonational or rhythmic problems hardly exist.

On this occasion, only heat--and a really potent fortissimo --was missing.

The group made no convincing case for Haydn’s early quartet; seemed to move automatically, if in handsome quietude, through Berg’s Opus 3, and produced the clean surfaces, if not the subtextual depths, of Beethoven’s late B-flat Quartet and Great Fugue. There is violence and vehemence in all this music; Sunday afternoon, the entire agenda seemed de-clawed.

Two more local stops remain on the Southland itinerary of Quartet Sine Nomine (which means Quartet Without a Name): Wednesday night at 8 in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and Thursday at 8 p.m. in University Theatre at UC Riverside.