Reconfigured Juilliard Quartet a Bit Less Edgy

Wednesday night the Juilliard String Quartet came home again to the Juilliard School, as it has been doing regularly for 51 years.

But this time, Robert Mann was not on stage. As a cocky and restless young violinist--fresh from the Army and World War II, and newly appointed to the Juilliard faculty--he had formed a string quartet that changed the face of American music, and chamber music, almost overnight.

Driven by Mann for half a century, the Juilliard demonstrated to the world that there was a distinctly American way to make chamber music--intense, urban, exciting, questing. It proved that there was an American approach to Beethoven that was dynamic and psychological. It made the world sit up and notice the six Bartok quartets. It inspired composer after composer--and especially Elliott Carter--to maintain the vitality of the string quartet.

The Juilliard did change, of course, over the years. Musical styles evolved. The Juilliard School moved from the remove of uptown to the center of the musical mainstream, Lincoln Center. There was the inevitable turnover in quartet members. Mann got older. Nevertheless, the Juilliard Quartet remained the intense, urban, exciting, questing force it had always been. Even when Mann’s intonation finally started to become unreliable, he made sure the quartet never lost its edge.

But that unreliability finally became a liability, and Mann retired from the ensemble last summer (he’s now taken up conducting, and reports are that his ability to make music sizzle are undiminished). Joel Smirnoff, who joined the Juilliard in 1986 as second violinist, has moved up to the first chair, and Ronald Copes (formerly of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet and a member of the faculty of UC Santa Barbara) is the new second violinist. Violist Samuel Rhodes and cellist Joel Krosnick carry on as they have for 28 and 23 years, respectively.

So make no mistake, the Juilliard pedigree remains in evidence. The intensity of sound is still there. The trademark rhythmic incisiveness is ever apparent. And, happily, the playing is now tighter than it has been for many a year. But the edge, the famous Juilliard edge, and the adventure, is, at least for now, gone.

On Wednesday, the program alone was an indication. The concert, the new Juilliard’s first major New York performance, featured none of the repertory associated most closely with the group--there was no Bartok, Beethoven, Carter, Ives or Schoenberg. And it featured nothing of our time.

In fact, with Mendelssohn’s Quartet No. 1, three short early and inconsequential movements by Copland and Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, this was the least imaginative Juilliard program I can recall. And when the new ensemble makes its way to Caltech March 8, it will do so with a similarly conventional program. (Indeed, one of the last new works the Juilliard, under Mann, commissioned was a magisterial clarinet quintet from Milton Babbitt; at Caltech the quartet is appearing with a guest clarinetist, Charles Neidich, but for the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.)

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Given the long-running participation of Rhodes and Krosnick, who play the lower instruments, the new Juilliard is built upon a familiar foundation. And also given that the second violinist doesn’t have a particularly prominent role in 19th century repertory, Copes’ participation Wednesday served principally for ensemble support, and he proved rock-solid.

So the real differences lie in Smirnoff’s new job. Like Mann, he has a wiry tone. Also like Mann he is a dynamic player with a lively intelligence. But he has yet to reveal a charisma strong as Mann’s.

The new Juilliard now sounds more at ease. The performance of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” was a perfect example. The Juilliard was the first string quartet to really explore the neurotic side of Schubert. It found the raw nerve underneath those soft plump, gemutlich surface melodies years before musicologists started uncovering the composer’s tormented inner life.

For the Juilliard, all Schubert was harmonically bold, and “Death and the Maiden” was an angry, driven piece. It dug into its rhythms with great and startling drama. It often felt as if the piece could break apart at any moment.

Wednesday much of the intensity was there, but so was a security blanket. Every player sounded drilled and in agreement. It was a strong performance, but one could sit back and know that all would be OK. Schubert’s raw nerve may not have been healed, but the Advil was at least taking effect.

We clearly must allow this son of the Juilliard Quartet time to find its own voice. But one of the characteristics of all the previous incarnations of the quartet was its impatience. It always just dove right in, obsessed with the very moment. That was what made it not just impressive but essential. Wednesday it was impressive.