MUSIC REVIEW : Quartet Kicks Off U.S. Tour

One of the joys of hearing a great string quartet play is the discovering of four distinct personalities beneath the ensemble surface, personalities engaged by and conversing with the music at hand.

The musicians of the Maggini String Quartet, on the other hand, would seem not to have a single personality to share among themselves. Their concert Sunday afternoon at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, the first on their current North American tour, was a peculiarly faceless affair and thus made for bland listening.

Not that the English ensemble--David Juritz and David Angel, violins, Martin Outram, viola, and Michael Kaznowski, cello--lacks most of the other attributes which go to make up a fine string quartet; individual accomplishment and ensemble precision were evident. These players just had nothing special to say with or about the music they brought along, it seemed. Beethoven’s String Quartet, Opus 74, “The Harp,” and Haydn’s Quartet, Opus 77, No. 1, unfolded in solid, professional and uneventful run-throughs.

At the center of the program, however, the Maggini offered the West Coast premiere of a work dedicated to them, the String Quartet (1993) by Jamaican/English composer Eleanor Alberga. Jagged, dissonant and engagingly kinetic in its outer movements, faintly folksy, introspective and nocturnal at its Bartokian core, the work made for a bold and entertaining 20 minutes.

But the cheerfulness and exuberance of the Haydn emerged reserved, precision of rhythm and ensemble the most remarkable quality of the performance. The playing in the Beethoven, though detailed and dynamically varied, proved somewhat less seamless and lacked a sense of personal involvement by these musicians.