Shanghai Quartet Conquers Unknown

Not so long ago, string quartets were the austere and lonely guardians of a well-defined tradition. Today they tend to be musical swashbucklers such as the Shanghai Quartet, which returned to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa on Sunday afternoon to open the center’s 1998-99 chamber series in Founders Hall with a characteristically varied, vividly projected program.

At its center was the Quartet No. 3 by Chinese American composer Bright Sheng. A contemporary of the ensemble’s founders at the Shanghai Conservatory, the composer was on hand Sunday to introduce his piece, which wrote in 1993 for the Takacs Quartet.

Cast in one fluidly sectional movement, the work was inspired in shape and motivic interplay by Sheng’s recollection of a Tibetan folk song and dance he had heard long before. It is deftly scored--Sheng can make passages in harmonics and pizzicato really sound on the instruments--and expressive in both its emotional trajectory and its resonant architecture.

Violinists Weigang Li and Yiwen Jiang, violist Honggang Li and cellist James Wilson have the kind of big and intense individual and collective sound that supported not only the agitated central dance, but also the retreating sorrow of the concluding elegy. They brought power and finesse to bear on what Sheng said was their first performance of his challenging piece--it is not likely to be their last.

The Shanghai Quartet has collaborated with a wide range of artists. Its friend-for-the-day Sunday was Richard Young, violist of the Vermeer Quartet, which mentored the Shanghais when they first arrived in the United States.

He joined them in Brahms’ Quintet in F, Opus 88--accurately described in the printed program but mislabeled as the Quintet in G, Opus 111. Complex of form and subtle in rhythmic cross-reference, this is not a piece that lends itself to ad hoc performance.

But with so sympathetic a spirit as Young ensconced in the second viola part, this was a steady reading, balanced and richly burnished in sound. This performance danced, with even the Sarabande shedding much of its wonted gravitas.

The Shanghais also attend respectfully and imaginatively to the core repertory. They have recently recorded Mozart’s final two quartets, and Sunday they opened with the first of those “Prussian” quartets, K. 575 in D. They have a genuine flair for the language of Mozart, but with a personal accent--articulate, elegant and more generous in vibrato and portamento than period purists might like.

This work shares an inventive approach to part-writing with the other pieces on the program, and the Shanghai Quartet clearly relishes music of shifting textures that demand leadership and independence from all four parts. The playing here was warmingly cheerful and to the point, not shy of sentiment but always alert to humor and congenial conversation.