MUSIC REVIEW : Lark Quartet Relies on Understatement

The Lark Quartet, which appeared on Sunday in Beckman Auditorium at Caltech before a subdued--as much by the afternoon heat, perhaps, as by the low-key playing--Coleman Concerts audience, isn’t concerned with making waves.

What violinists Eva Gruesser and Jennifer Orchard, violist Anna Kruger and cellist Astrid Schween convey in terms of sound and style betrays none of the urban-aggressive stance assumed by many of their young quartet peers.

In the E-flat Quartet from Haydn’s Opus 33, the so-called “Joke” (after its several false, premature-applause-inspiring endings), the Larks did anything but soar, or fool around.

Instead, they presented Haydn’s wickedly irregular phrases as if they were place-settings at a formal dinner, with a sense of calm bordering on primness. Another intended mirth-provoker, the boozy glissandos of the scherzo’s midsection, seemed not to amuse, or otherwise move, violinist Gruesser, to judge by her extreme understatement.

The Third Quartet (1983) of Alfred Schnittke followed, and the players sent out its mixed signals efficiently. But after a decade of familiarity with the Russian composer’s grab-bag style, one (this one, at any rate) begins to doubt that anything of substance underlies his dolefully entertaining exterior.

The New York-based ensemble couldn’t be faulted for its clear exposition of this set of variations on material culled from Lassus, Beethoven, Shostakovich and something that sounded like “How Dry I Am.”

At the end, the Lark’s contained style proved surprisingly well-suited to the Quartet in F, Opus 135, Beethoven’s last. With their finely detailed reading, the Lark made a strong point by being determinedly unpowerful, by not attempting to align this singular work with the burly, complex creations that compose the rest of late-Beethoven.

The Lark Quartet convincingly showed that grace, lyricism and a sense of order, not heaven-storming, were what the composer valued most highly at the end.