MUSIC REVIEW : Haydn Soars With Angeles String Quartet

If, in fact, the case for Haydn needs to be fortified, the Angeles String Quartet is well-suited to the task. Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the L.A.-based quartet gave the second of three concerts devoted to the string quartets of Haydn, with a measured aplomb and an engaging intensity.

Playing three quartets from different stages in the composer’s development, the group made Haydn sing, and even accented his underrated iconoclasm. Haydn emerged heroic. Ditto the ensemble.

Except for a few minor slips of concentration, the ensemble--violinists Kathleen Lenski and Steven Miller, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erbody--showed admirable crispness and cohesion. They displayed careful dynamic contouring and a purposeful clarity, never sacrificing fluid, collective expressiveness.

Still, the composer was the evening’s focus--as it should be. Haydn’s Quartet in E, Opus 17, proved relatively conservative compared to the formal experimentation of the Quartet in C, Opus 54, with an adagio in which the first violinist launches on a seemingly improvisational flight over a mournful procession of chords.

Sections of the Quartet in F, Opus 77, Haydn’s last completed quartet, slouch toward the Romantic model of Beethoven. The moving Andante, with its deceptively simple theme refracted and expanded, precedes an exhilarating, and yet--of course--perfectly composed finale.