MUSIC REVIEW : Quartet Sine Nomine Gets Matinee Blahs

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

*

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.

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.

* Quartet Sine Nomine will play Haydn’s String Quartet in C, Op.9, No.1; Alban Berg’s Quartet for Strings, Op.3, and Beethoven’s String Quartet No.13 in B-flat, Op.130 with Grosse Fuge, Op.133, Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Curtain: 8 p.m. $20. A free concert preview starts at 7 p.m. (714) 556-2787.