Cohesive Work From Miami String Quartet

For its appearance in the Brunch Classics series at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre Sunday morning, the Miami String Quartet spanned three centuries of music, without blinking. From the Haydn trove, the F-minor Quartet, Opus 20, No. 5; the hum-along chestnut of Borodin’s Quartet No. 2 in D; and a 1990s-vintage work added up to a balanced musical affair, and, likewise, the playing.

Cohesion is the byword with this group, with no unequal strengths in the collective fabric. They work together, on a deep level, and have arrived at that point where inter-musician communication comes, if not easily, then naturally.

From our time, but with little disruption of the musical flow of the program, they played Peteris Vasks’ melancholy Quartet No. 3, written in 1995. The Miami Quartet has an ongoing rapport with this composer; this is the third of his quartets it has premiered in America. Hailing from Latvia and revealing parallels with the better-known Arvo Part from nearby Estonia, Vasks has a distinctive, painterly way with string-quartet writing. He often draws on chordal effects, with voices moving in collusion, mixes melodic and coloristic effects, and, like Part, blends medieval and modern sounds. He sometimes hints at minimalism, though always fueled by an earnest emotionalism.

In this work, an air of sweet longing emerges in the first movement, as melodic themes--revisited at the end of the piece--hover over sustained tones. Later, elegiac spirits and abstract twittering contribute to the engaging musical mosaic, played here with care and gusto.

The group also conferred a polished, stately poise on the Haydn, and gave fresh, heartfelt meaning to the oft-heard themes of the Borodin. As for the inherent weather report aspect of this alfresco chamber music series, incidental airborne distractions of wind gusts and passing planes weren’t about to undo the confident force onstage.