Muir String Quartet Passes Its Tests

The Muir String Quartet, which on Friday opened the new season of Da Camera Society soirees in the downtown Doheny Mansion, concerns itself primarily with the big picture.

Which is not to say that the Boston-based ensemble--violinists Peter Zazofsky and Wei-Pin Kuo, violist Steven Ansell and cellist Michael Reynolds--is incapable of the subtle gesture, as indicated by its nuanced projection of the flickering minuet of Schubert’s A-minor Quartet. Broadly speaking, however, the Muir’s interpretive stance is predicated on rhythmic thrust, lush sonorities and the louder end of the dynamic spectrum.

They deliver their goods with consistently centered intonation, generous (but stylistically pertinent) helpings of vibrato and obvious relish, qualities wonderfully suited on this occasion to the lusty dances and grandly sentimental tunes of Smetana’s E-minor Quartet (“From My Life”), a test of any quartet’s technical mettle and particularly of the violist’s. The players triumphed on all counts, to the obvious delight of the audience.

In the program opener, Barber’s Opus 11 Quartet, the foursome offered a fitting contrast between the craggy outer movements--here, fast and furious--and the central slow movement, the celebrated “Adagio for Strings” in its original chamber setting, played with stern grandeur and implacable momentum, thereby avoiding any suggestion of bathos.

Where the Muir’s super-vigorous approach proved less felicitous was in the Schubert quartet, which would have profited from a greater degree of repose throughout. At the same time, the performers could be admired for bringing some dramatic scope to a score that tends to whine when treated too respectfully.