MUSIC REVIEW : Energy, Familiarity Cross in ‘Equinox’ : Despite the recognizable style, the themes are driving in Tania Gabrielle French’s work, receiving its West Coast premiere.

When the Angeles String Quartet presented the West Coast premiere Thursday of Tania Gabrielle French’s String Quartet No. 1, subtitled “Equinox,” the work emerged both enticing and familiar.

Responding to questions posed in the course of a preconcert talk in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, French testified to a sense of estrangement from academia-led trends in composition, adding, “The most recent composer I really feel is a genius is Shostakovich.”

If this work is any indication, the 30-year-old Santa Monica resident has been strongly influenced by the quartets of that genius.

“Equinox” is full of driving power, sometimes bordering on brutality. French makes abundant use of rhythmic repetition and ostinato figures to convey insistent, even frenetic energy, or to set up hypnotic figures over which mournful melodies can soar.

She favors granitic textures and exhilarating rhythms. Yet, for all the familiarity of the style, the themes are refreshing, the effect--particularly in the exacting hands of the Angeles Quartet--convincing and the result, aided by its apparent derivativeness (a characteristic that can be defended with plenty of lofty precedents), immediately accessible.

The Angeles Quartet gave the work its world premiere a year ago, in New York--though Steven Miller has since replaced violinist Roger Wilkie to complete the roster along with violinist Kathleen Lenski, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erdody.

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On this occasion, it brought energy and authority to the reading, qualities that also defined performances of Mozart’s Quartet in B-flat, K. 589, and Dvorak’s “American” Quartet.

The ensemble boasts consistent technical finesse. Yet for all its polish, the group seemed unable to accommodate different styles. With few exceptions--a rhythmically buoyant, joyful Allegro assai in the B-flat Quartet and a crisply electric Finale for the “American”--they approached everything with the same thrust and determination that succeeded so well in the newest piece.

So armed, they found little of the amiable dance in Mozart’s Minuet and scant joy in his opening movement. Sympathetically echoed by Erdody, Lenski transformed the expansive song of Dvorak’s Lento into a somber, Angst- ridden catharsis.

Still, the quartet turned in intelligent readings, brimming with intensity and point, often graceful and never boring.