Elegant Sound in Environs to Match

Brilliant, virtuosic and still mellow, its members perfectly meshed in sound while retaining their individual performing personalities--the Brentano String Quartet, just 5 years old, must be one of the great musical hopes of a field overcrowded with contenders. Its return to the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series, sponsored by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, Tuesday night marked a high point in the 1996-97 local season.

Transparently and impeccably performed, the Brentano’s program in the Grand Salon of the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel could not have been more serious but its playing made it at the same time perfectly accessible.

Beethoven’s enigmatic Quartet, Opus 130, climaxed an agenda including Schubert’s G-minor Quartet and Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. The mysteries in Opus 130 weren’t solved--they never will be--but the players--violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violist Misha Amory and cellist Michael Kannen--clarified its externals remarkably, and in the process illuminated its inner qualities.

The evening began with the many-faceted Schubert work, aggressively and thoroughly plumbed.

The players followed this worldly achievement by moving to a higher, more seraphic plane when clarinetist David Shifrin joined them for the Mozart Quintet. The aural beauties of the performance would have been satisfying enough; in addition, the five players made every utterance sing and every phrase connect within the total. For once, the intellectual knowledge that this is a masterpiece came to life with palpable, physical proof.