Kronos Plays in the Right Place at the Right Time

One potential danger in the ever-expanding musical worldview of the Kronos Quartet is that its concerts can seem like a whirlwind: an “if it’s Tuesday, this must be Uzbekistan” musical tour. But when the programming succeeds, as it did magically at the Irvine Barclay Theater on Sunday, it can work wonders, opening our ears to alternate musical perspectives.

No small part of the charm on Sunday had to do with the additional presence of virtuoso Turkish musician Burhan Ocal, who plays drums and stringed instruments. Ocal opened the concert’s second half with solo performances, including an especially stunning improvisation on the darbuka, a hand drum that responds to subtle finger and hand manipulations. A tonal painter, he produced a remarkable range of sounds. Next, he joined the quartet for a short set of pieces from ancient Turkish sources and one new composition, full of seductive, odd meters (by Western standards) and the heated, driving intensity of unison parts with as much focus on rhythm as on melody.

This meeting was tailored for the Eclectic Orange Festival, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, and it proved a fruitful format for the Kronos. Here was a means of tracing culture back to its roots and watching firsthand how that musical approach fits within the Kronos ethos.

The concert’s opening half, a more typical Kronos set, opened with the local premiere of Steve Reich’s “Triple Quartet.” An extension of his “Different Trains” of 10 years ago, it relies on layers of prerecorded phantom playing plus the real thing, in a post-minimalist map on which tension and propulsion rule. Tango legend Anibal Troilo’s “Responso,” was a wily, passionate little palate cleanser before the mystical beauty of “Oasis,” by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, a fine composer from Azerbaijan.

The itinerary then shifted to India for the simple melodic sashay of “Tonight Is the Night” by renowned Indian film composer Rahul Dev Burman, and then to Yugoslavia for “Panonia Boundless,” a new piece by Alexandra Vrebalov fortified with joyful Slavic energy, building to a fervent folk-dance-like climax.

After 26 years, the Kronos Quartet remains a new music phenomenon. Even with cellist Jennifer Culp sitting in the chair of charter member Joan Jeanrenaud, on a yearlong sabbatical, they’re old hands with youthful curiosity intact.