Strong Local Debut for Leontovych Quartet

The Leontovych String Quartet, which made its local debut Tuesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, is not a glamour ensemble. It doesn’t arrive with hype. It doesn’t play with glossy finish. Sometimes it sounds scrubby.

No matter. Violinists Yuri Mazurkevich and Yuri Kharenko, violist Borys Deviatov and cellist Vladimir Panteleyev gave unaffected and moving performances of unfamiliar works by Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk.

In fact, they made us think more about the music than about their playing--not a common event.

Despite its high opus number, Schubert’s Quartet in E-flat, Opus 125, No. 1, is an early work, written for the Schubert family. We smile at the 16-year-old composer’s invention of themes in the first movement and appreciate his struggle with scherzo form in the second. Two measures into the third, we fall under a spell. The breathing slows. The heart opens. We acknowledge the presence of genius. The final movement abounds in his new-found vitality.

Tchaikovsky has no peer in shifting between the country and the court. The Quartet No. 2, however, feels so rooted in the country, it should be called “The Good Earth.” Or rather, “The Good Russian Earth,” for Tchaikovsky exults in his Slavic heritage.

We hear no tortured psyche. Instead, as the music unfolds in the hands of these players, we hear a vigorous composer who has a steady, epic vision that slackens only in the final fugue.

*

Skoryk, who was born in 1938, wrote his Partita No. 6 this year for these players. He uses baroque and classical forms to organize the material. In 20 uninterrupted minutes, the work ranges through various dark emotions. When it seems about to end in triumph, however, it pulls back for a long reflection and concludes abruptly, ambiguously. No easy solution.

The quartet, formed in 1971 in Kiev, now resident in Boston, played Haydn’s Serenade as the encore. The program was sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.