Parisii Quartet Refreshes the Classics

Founded in Paris in 1984, the Parisii Quartet is a prime example of the kind of polished ensemble that makes the 54-year-old Music Guild concert series tick. If lesser known from a general-purpose, name-brand perspective, the quartet boasted an impressive music-making acumen and projected the right degrees of passion and detail.

Monday night at the Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center--the Music Guild’s home in the Valley starting this season--the Parisii Quartet settled in for a longish, satisfying program of German quartet music, with Haydn’s Quartet in C, Opus 54, No. 2; Schubert’s Quartet in A Minor, D. 804; and Beethoven’s transitional Quartet in F, Opus 59, No. 1.

Opening the program, Haydn’s wit and wisdom paved the way for angst-inflected music to come. Here, first violinist Thierry Brodard shone nicely, via the Gypsy inflections during the second movement. In the Schubert quartet, written a few years before his death, the taut mesh of the group came to bear in an opus at once reflective by nature and well-stocked with melodic insights. The concert’s second half belonged to the Beethoven, over whose adventurous sprawl the group presided with a lively authority.

On this night, the Parisii Quartet won its audience not through rarity of programming but by treating standard works with fresh intensity and expressive panache. Old became new; familiarity was refreshed. Mission accomplished.

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* The Parisii Quartet repeats this program tonight at 8 for Music Guild in Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St. $7 to $24. The ensemble plays a different program on Monday Evening Concerts, Monday at 8 p.m. at the L.A. County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. $6 to $15.