Lafayette Quartet Plays to Its Strengths

As originally announced, the Lafayette String Quartet’s program on the Music Guild series at Cal State Northridge’s New Performing Arts Center resembled a sandwich consisting of an ample roll with a wispy-thin slice of tangy Swiss cheese--major quartets of Mozart and Schubert separated by a dash of mordant Stravinsky. At curtain time Monday night, though, the audience found out that the Mozart K. 464 Quartet, a work that inspired Beethoven, had been replaced by a work inspired by Beethoven--Mendelssohn’s Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13.

So Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet--a succinct, acerbic series of vignettes on the road from Russia to Neo-Classicism (later orchestrated as part of Four Etudes for Orchestra)--became the leadoff work, dispatched with slightly broad tempos and arch humor by the all-female Victoria, Canada-based quartet. It is amusing to note that the Stravinsky, all seven minutes of it, comprises about half of the composer’s entire string quartet output. The Mendelssohn, not quite a rarity but still not everyday quartet fare, is songful and sunlit even when shaken with the agitation that foreshadows Mendelssohn’s great final quartet.

The expansive, almost symphonic Schubert Quartet in G, D. 887 gave the Lafayettes their toughest challenge. While some of their playing was a bit scrappy, they were able to shape each movement with sufficient dramatic impact, digging into the big string tremolos of the second movement and maintaining firm, driving rhythms in the Scherzo and Finale.

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* The Lafayette String Quartet repeats this program tonight at 8, Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 E. 8th St., $5-$24. (888) 315-7888.