Schubert Soars With Alban Berg Quartet

Schubert has been much with us in his bicentennial year. Not that his “Death and the Maiden” Quartet has ever been in short supply, but the anniversary has at least brought it out in illuminating contexts, such as the superbly played Schubert program from the Alban Berg Quartet on Saturday evening at Veterans Wadsworth Theater.

Two quartets by the teenage composer, D. 173 in G minor and D. 87 in E-flat, suggested that even genius cannot transmute technical precocity into artistic gold. Amiable to a fault, these modestly endowed works are really extended violin sonatinas with string trio accompaniments. Surprisingly, it is more in rhythm and overall energy than in turns of melody or harmonic feints that they most foreshadow the mature Schubert.

The Alban Berg Quartet took the music on those terms. First violinist Gunter Pichler was much in the foreground, applying a touch of portamento here, briskly clipped phrases there, keeping tempos up and surfaces clean. His colleagues--violinist Gerhard Schulz, violist Thomas Kakuska and cellist Valentin Erben--supported him handsomely, suave in sound and alert to nuance.

Even considered as one of the troika of Schubert’s last quartets, let alone in comparison with works composed 10 years and more earlier, the magical “Death and the Maiden” is truly sui generis. Here its composer’s melodic inspiration ran rampant, filling living forms with restless energies and volatile emotional currents.

This is a work in which the Bergs have long been acclaimed--their recording of it is certainly at or near the top of any Schubertian’s shortlist of chamber music essentials. The veteran Viennese ensemble was never over the top, as some of the harder-hitting young quartets can be. Instead, it demonstrated the values of an awesomely controlled pianissimo and lithe, springy rhythms and proved that consistently burnished sound is quite compatible with maximum expressive force. We hear louder--and longer--performances of this every season but few as all-encompassing in musicality and heart.