Guitar Quartet Showcase Splendid Music, Setting

It’s clear by now that the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet--John Dearman, William Kanengiser , Scott Tennant and Andrew York--is one of the wonders of the chamber music scene rooted in the West. It boasts intricate arrangements, all-for-one empathy and repertoire-stretching adventurism.

And, as with much chamber music, the pleasures of hearing the group expands as the venue gets smaller. That theory holds especially true when the worst seat in the house is just across the living room, as on Sunday afternoon, when the quartet wrapped up the Chamber Music in Historic Sites season. The site was the Naiditch House in Altadena, a split-level structure laid out on a cliff, with dramatic views of the basin below and the arid hills above.

Though repeating much of the music heard in concert at UCLA in January, the quartet came across as particularly vivid and personal here. It brought fire to York’s world music-influenced pieces and clarity to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, the bustling linearity of which makes a keen translation to guitar quartet.

In homage to the death last week of classical guitar patriarch Celedonio Romero, the group changed the program to include Kanengiser’s arrangement of music from Bizet’s “Carmen.” Passion, kitsch and technical flourish converged in a room with a dazzling view.