Musical Chairs

Dunsmuir, a town of a little more than 2,000 people in California’s Siskiyou County, gets its name from 19th century coal baron Alexander Dunsmuir, who promised the settlers there in 1886 a fountain if they would name the town after him.

They did, and the fountain he built still stands at the railroad station that was once an outpost of the Southern Pacific railroad.

Dunsmuir also is the name of a piano quartet formed a hundred years later, and most likely named for the same philanthropist.

“There’s nothing very complicated in our name,” said Justin Blasdale, pianist for the group that will play works by Schubert, Copland and Dvorak on Sunday at Fullerton’s Sunny Hills High School. The concert is part of the free Fullerton Friends of Music series.

“It comes from the Dunsmuir House and Gardens in Oakland, where we had our first concert and [later] a series there,” Blasdale said in a recent interview from his home in Alameda. “I guess it’s the same Mr. Dunsmuir who has a castle in Canada and a town in Northern California.”

A native of Berkeley, Blasdale studied with Rosina Lhevine at the Juilliard School in New York, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He won prizes in the International American Music, Artists Advisory Council and International Bach competitions. He toured with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and often performs with the St. Petersburg String Quartet.

“I had just moved back to California after a number of years in New York and met Jennifer Culp, our cellist,” he said. Culp had studied at the San Francisco and New England conservatories and in England under Hungarian violinist Sandor Vegh.

“We had a trio for a short while,” Blasdale said. “Then the violinist got married and moved to Japan, and Jennifer and I talked about forming a larger group. We had gotten to like playing together.”

So the trio became a quartet.

Current members also include violinist Margaret Batjer and violist Roxann Jacobson. Batjer

won’t be playing Sunday, however, because she’s expecting her second child this month. Filling in will be Ronald Copes, a former group member who now is a violinist with the Juilliard Quartet.

“It’s like homecoming week,” Blasdale said.

It’s also a bit of a farewell because Culp will be going to fill in for Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud for a year, beginning in 1999.

“We’re playing musical chairs,” Blasdale said. The group plans to announce temporary replacements later.

“We do roughly 20 to 25 concerts a year,” he added. “We’re not necessarily making a complete living from the piano quartet. We’re doing more now. For a while, it was difficult. There are so many fine musicians around and fine groups. It takes a bit of luck and perseverance and hard work.”

Blasdale, for example, teaches at two schools, including the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Culp teaches at two other schools, and Jacobson performs in orchestras.

Sunday’s program features Schubert’s early Adagio and Rondo Concertante, Copland’s Piano Quartet and Dvorak’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, Opus 87.

“Basically, we choose pieces we like, toss them around and come up with a convincing menu of pieces that go well together and balance each other out,” he said. “We try to include something from this century. We have a strong commitment to new music and try at least one newer work.”

He described the Copland piece as beautiful and complicated yet listenable, with jazz influences and a very humorous scherzo believed influenced by barnyard sounds the composer heard as he wrote while summering on a farm.

Schubert’s Adagio and Rondo Concertante is a little-known, seldom played work written when the composer was 19. (He died at age 31.)

“I could never find the situation for which it was written, but he seems to be making fun of piano virtuosos of the day and of operatic cliches,” Blasdale said. “It’s a young work, but a delightful piece.”

The Dvorak quartet, by contrast, is one of the best-known and beloved piano quartets.

“It’s full of Dvorak’s wonderfully rich and fresh lyricism,” he said. “Like all of his music, it has a lot of folk-dance influence. It’s a very romantic, wonderful piece. I don’t have much to add to it.”

Figuring out interpretations among the four players can be a lively experience.

“We don’t usually have knockdown, drag-outs,” Blasdale said. “We do have healthy discussions on occasion. Sometimes words are said. But mostly it’s polite. Everyone has their say. It’s quite democratic.”

Although strings are easy to balance, adding a piano can make for balance problems. Often it depends on the venue itself.

“There are different sets of problems in different halls--where we place ourselves, whether the top of the piano goes all the way up or all the way down or on a book,” Blasdale said. “The strings like the piano top up because the lid acts as a kind of sounding board for them and makes richer sounds.

“I like the top up because you can play softer and get a clearer, softer sound. But in some halls it’s impossible to have the top up.”

Piano quartets are far more rare these day than string quartets, and the Dunsmuir group hopes that will draw listeners.

“The repertory we have is wonderfully diverse and beautiful,” he said. “I hope people will come.”

* The Dunsmuir Piano Quartet will play music of Schubert, Copland and Dvokak on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center, Sunny Hills High School, 1801 Warburton Way, Fullerton. The concert, part of the Fullerton Friends of Music series, is free of charge. (714) 525-9504.