Angeles String Quartet’s Balanced Program Delivers

In recent seasons, the Angeles String Quartet has been devoting its concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to no one else but Haydn. And there was a goal running parallel to this single-minded concept, a complete recording of all of the Austrian composer’s quartets--still a rare happening even well into the CD era--for the Philips Classics label.

So, now that the cycle is done and due out in 2000, the Angeles foursome is turning to other matters at the Bing Theatre in 1999-2000, while keeping its collective hand in Haydn. Thus the well-balanced, historically intriguing, mostly beautifully played--and in one instance, mislabeled--program Wednesday night.

The confusion occurred in the opening segment. Although the printed program announced the Haydn Quartet in C, Opus 76, No. 3, the players delivered instead the Quartet in G, Opus 76, No. 1--without any inserts or announcements to that effect from the stage. The piece received a vigorous performance, with flashes of humor in the scherzo-like minuet and a sinister-sounding opening to the Finale, but not informing the audience of the switcheroo was really unfair.

The Debussy Quartet in G Minor picked up some intensity midway through the first movement; other points of note were passages of rough-textured drive in the Scherzo and a quietly passionate, delicately played coda to the slow movement that seemed to float. And after intermission, Beethoven’s Quartet in F minor, Opus 95 tripped along at standard tempos (though the scherzo seemed a wee bit slow), with plenty of contrast in the dynamics, good, solid rhythms and first-rate solo passages from first violinist Kathleen Lenski.

Between Debussy and Beethoven lay Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, a piece that in terms of length (4 1/2 minutes) would be considered a mere hyphen, but actually has enough concentrated content for a full-length work. Though the Angeles’ collective timbre seemed somewhat on the thin side in this room throughout the evening, their sound was well-suited for the lean, rustling, slithering, atonal yet not forbidding score, amounting to a muted fireworks display.