Music’s Servants, Masters of Craft

String quartets often can be divided into two types: those in which the first violinist dominates and the other players serve faithfully and those in which four independent voices assert themselves strongly but agree to collaborate anyway.

Both can make wonderful music.

But the excellent Vellinger String Quartet, formed in London in 1991 and already a major ensemble, suggests another, more universal and more important division: those artists who cause us to focus on themselves by imposing their personalities or egos on the music and those who make us aware of the glorious composer-creator.

The Vellingers, who made their Orange County debut in Founders Hall on Thursday night, made us aware of the composer--three composers, actually--and it was a wonderful experience.

This isn’t to say that the musicians--violinists Stephanie Gonley and Harvey de Souza, violist Timothy Boulton and cellist Bjorg Vaernes--are weak in technique, musicianship or insight. No one could accomplish what they did without being supremely on top of these qualities.

Completing the Center Concert Series, the quartet gave us fresh and lively Franz Josef Haydn (Quartet in E-flat, Opus 50, No. 3), epic Benjamin Britten (Quartet No. 2) and dramatic Beethoven (Quartet in E-flat, Opus 127).

Each composer’s unique style was delineated. When was the last time we heard anything as fundamental and yet as elusive as that?

Where grace was required, grace was there. Where energy and vigor were expected, both were present. Where the composer’s ideas soared, so did the playing.

Balance, immaculate attack, unity of impulse and the ability to make phrases live and grow--all the qualities necessary for superior ensemble--these musicians achieved, without any self-serving or self-congratulatory effort.

Yet they were not faceless executants. There was plenty of subtle interplay, responsiveness to one another and appreciation of what colleagues were doing. They just didn’t make that the focus of the event. The focus was on the composer and the music they were there to serve.

The Vellinger String Quartet doesn’t have the kind of superficial glamour that can help careers these days, but it has something far more substantial and important: purity and unspoiled musicianship that bring us surprisingly close to the works that charm or inspire us.