Guarneri’s Time Together Proves Well-Spent

In playing chamber music, a friend remarked at intermission, there is no substitute for time. Neither of us could pinpoint how many years it takes for a quartet to become great, but we agreed it can’t be done fast.

Prodigies appear every year. Young quartets--ensembles playing together three or five or even seven years--have something to offer. But for a real understanding of chamber music, you have to go to the masters. You have to go to an ensemble like the Guarneri String Quartet, which was founded in 1964 and still consists of the original members.

Violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violist Michael Tree and cellist David Soyer proved the point in music of Mozart, Verdi and Brahms on Monday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, part of a series sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

Their unanimity in attack, phrasing and color; their perfect balance among parts, still allowing shifting prominence; and their organic response to the music (which always sounds fresh) all virtually define an ideal of chamber playing.

Certainly, any of these composers could be interpreted in other satisfying and enriching ways. Brahms’ First Quartet, in particular, could bear greater emotional weight and extremes than the Guarneri brought to it. But the players achieved eloquence in capturing the composer’s surging Romantic passion, patrician control and pensive reflection.

In his long career, Verdi composed only one instrumental composition--a String Quartet in E minor--which he wrote only to keep himself busy during a three-week delay of the Naples premiere of “Aida” when the soprano fell ill.

The work rarely surfaces in concert or recording, but the Guarneri is an advocate. It’s harder to play than it sounds; certainly challenging for the players, although its rewards are rather modest, at least for one listener. It is fascinating to hear Verdi writing music so abstract and un-operatic so capably. Yet the most interesting moments remained the ones that evoked song, as in the vibrant cello theme of the slow movement, or fragmentary dramatic scenes.

Mozart’s first series of six quartets span his 16th and 17th year. They reflect Italianate influences in style and structure, consisting of three, rather than four, movements. The Guarneri opened the program with the quartets in B-flat, K. 159, and E-flat, K. 160, playing them in reversed order to their writing, which in Mozart’s case could have been a matter of weeks or days.

The music is engaging with its gallant and lyrical felicity, mostly bright but sometimes shadowed. But Mozart hadn’t begun to hit his stride with this form yet. He was still treating it as an entertainment. The Guarneri certainly made it that, while in the process demonstrating that unanimity in spinning out filigree line that is the stuff of renown.

For an encore, the quartet played a glowing account of the slow movement from Debussy’s Quartet in G minor.