Music Review : Kronos Quartet’s 10-Piece Westwood Program Fascinates

Good music is a comfort, but a mundane one, like a beautiful carpet or a cozy chair. Great music disturbs, then uplifts, taking the listener to a spiritual plane where comfort is irrelevant. The Kronos Quartet, ever searching for important new works in a world of pleasing but ordinary ones, reminded us of these truisms Friday night.

The ensemble, playing in the commodious sanctuary at Westwood United Methodist Church, brought an overgenerous program of 10 pieces, eight of them in premiere performances, and found gold in three: Sofia Gubaidulina’s Quartet No. 4 and two instrumental/vocal works by Arvo Part, his “Cantate Domino” and “Missa Syllabica.”

These are haunting works that resonate in the ear and mind after one hears them, works of layered activity and meaning, of transparent soundscape, of apprehendable rhetoric. They engage the listener, then keep his attention, becoming both balm and provocation.

With added lighting effects, the Kronos players--David Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, Joan Jeanrenaud on cello--highlighted the Russian composer’s brief but content-dense work in a deeply probing performance. In Part’s near-mystical essays, meshing of the vocal quartet Theatre of Voices with the strings proved effortless, but, for the listener, emotionally gripping.

Equally polished in execution--the Kronos seems to be in peak form these days--recent pieces by Brent Michael Davids, Steven Mackey and Lois V. Vierk, affectionate revivals of historical miniatures by the American jazzist Raymond Scott (who died this year) and the world premiere of a Middle-Eastern suite by Lebanese composer Ali Jihad Racy, made up the rest of this program, presented by the UCLA Center for the Arts.

In his own piece, Racy joined the quartet, playing both flute and lute, assisted by percussionist Souhael Kaspar.