Tokyo Quartet Meshes After Shaky Start

There was every indication that a long Sunday afternoon was in store when the not-quite Tokyo String Quartet took the stage of Beckman Auditorium on the Caltech campus for an extraordinarily scrappy performance of Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet.

The “not-quite” refers to the first violin position, vacated for a season of personal regrouping by the vaunted Peter Oundjian and occupied currently by Andrew Dawes.

Dawes was the problem, his intonation running the narrow gamut from suspect to unequivocally guilty, and operating on a much lower energy level than his unimpeachable colleagues: second violinist Kikuei Ikeda, violist Kazuhide Isomura and cellist Sadao Harada.

But this was only momentarily aberrant behavior. Within the opening measures of the ensuing Second Quartet of Bartok, the intensity and command of Dawes’ work matched that of his partners.

The four players, individually and as a tight unit, mined the score’s deep vein of melancholy without shortchanging its rhythmic ferocity. Whether this was the Tokyo Quartet or not seemed beside the point under the circumstances.

Beethoven’s immense C-sharp minor Quartet, Opus 131, in a reading that as much as any in recent memory combined vigor, technical security and formal mastery, concluded the program--and the 92nd season of Coleman Concerts--with a heroic flourish.

Here, Dawes recalled his best days as leader of his own ensemble, the late Orford Quartet, while the Tokyo veterans supplied all that the most jaded listener might require in terms of spirit and variety of tone.