MUSIC REVIEWS : Cleveland Strings at Schoenberg Hall

The Cleveland String Quartet brought a tense energy to music of Beethoven, Brahms and Libby Larsen on Wednesday in Schoenberg Hall at UCLA. It was an energy not always appropriate to the styles of these differing composers.

Most persuasive was the playing in Larsen’s “Quartet: Schoenberg, Schenker and Schillinger,” composed in 1990 for the Quartet members--William Preucil and Peter Salaff, violins; James Dunham, viola, and Paul Katz, cello.

The work affectionately traverses the compositional styles of these three composers and theoreticians. One suspects there are hidden puns, references and quotations that experts would detect in the piece as it advances from austere 12-tone methodology to final obsessive, off-kilter rhythms.

Certainly the stuck-in-a-rut consonances and never-arriving final cadence in the middle movement seem to tweak a bit the deep-structure theories of Heinrich Schenker.

There may be some question, however, whether anyone needs another testimonial to the shift in 20th-Century music from melody to rhythm, as Larsen explains her purpose in a program note, in an age sufficiently dominated by boom boxes and rap music.

Still, the four played the work with masterly attention and commitment (even when Katz was required to slap the cello as if he were playing bass in a jazz band).

Beethoven’s Quartet in G, Opus 18, No. 2, emerged with rugged poise, sunniness and insouciance, although also with some raggedness in ensemble.

Brahms’ Quartet in B-flat, unfortunately, suffered the most from a no-nonsense, impersonal and ultimately antiseptic interpretation offered by the four. Dunham tried to inject more expressivity when he had opportunities to do so, but Preucil would have none of it. Tension and drive replaced sentiment; mere clean execution replaced sweetness and charm.