Brentano Quartet Takes the Fifth for Dvorak

Establishing identity and name recognition can be difficult for a young ensemble in the crowded world of the string quartet. That has not been much of a problem, however, for the Brentano String Quartet, which is already well-launched on the chamber music fast track.

“We’ve been fairly fortunate in that regard,” said Mark Steinberg, first violinist for the six-season-old ensemble, which returns to the Southland for the third time, for a Philharmonic Society concert tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre with the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition’s gold medalist, Jon Nakamatsu. “You don’t set out to make yourself different. You just sit down and play the music as you feel it; that’s the main focus for everything.”

Of course, winning the 1995 Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the 10th annual Martin E. Segal Award and the first Cleveland Quartet Award last year didn’t hurt either. Add to that critical acclaim from around the country and now Europe (after recent debuts in London, Paris and Amsterdam), and it is no wonder that the New York-based Brentano has become a recognizable brand so quickly.

The name Brentano, by the way, comes from Antonie Brentano, widely believed to have been Beethoven’s now cinematically notorious “Immortal Beloved.” That does not mean, however, that the Brentanos consider themselves Beethoven specialists, though the composer’s Quartet in A, Opus 18, No. 5, opens tonight’s program.

“The Beethoven quartets are such an important body of work that any quartet which is serious is going to devote time to Beethoven,” Steinberg said from his New York home. “This season we are playing an early-, middle- and a late-period quartet of Beethoven, and it’s like three different composers. This one is very light with a lot of wit, still in the sound world of Haydn.”

It was repertory that brought Steinberg--who has played with ensembles ranging from period-instrument bands to the much-esteemed contemporary music groups Speculum Musicae and Da Capo Players--into the string quartet fold.

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“String quartets are the greatest music for a string player, much richer than the solo repertory,” Steinberg said. “Then there’s the autonomous nature of the ensemble, where we’re in charge of the interpretation, not some conductor. Working with three colleagues is a lot of fun.”

Those colleagues are violinist Serena Canin, violist Misha Armory and cellist Michael Kannen. Steinberg, Canin and Armory were all students at Juilliard, where they decided to form a quartet. Armory had performed with Kannen, a graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and they centered the search for a cellist on him, rehearsing together for several months and trying some informal concerts before establishing the group.

“You want to be absolutely sure you have the right person,” Steinberg said. “A string quartet is a very intense relationship. We practice three or four hours a day when preparing programs, and on tour we’re together even more. When problems come up or musical differences arise, you need to know that they can be resolved without hostilities.”

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The Brentanos had no such assurance about their partner this evening, meeting Nakamatsu only a few days before the concert. In fact, they did not even know who the pianist would be for this concert when they booked the date. The program was arranged through the presenter, with the pianist to be the winner of the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition.

“We’re just going to sit down and hope something good happens,” Steinberg said. The piece in question is the evergreen Dvorak Quintet, with which both the pianist and the strings are quite familiar. Nakamatsu played the piece with the Tokyo String Quartet in the semifinal round of the Cliburn in a performance that earned him the competition’s Steven De Groote Memorial Award for best chamber music performance, besides his gold medal.

“I started playing with other people in high school,” Nakamatsu said of his chamber music experiences. “It is very different than working with an orchestra, where you have 100 people controlled by one person on the podium. There’s a completely different kind of energy to it. You get more personality working with an ensemble of peers. Rehearsals are sometimes more fun than the performance.’

* The Brentano String Quartet, with pianist Jon Nakamatsu, performs music by Beethoven, Bartok and Dvorak at 8 p.m. today at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. $20-$25. (714) 553-2422.