Quartet Ravishes With Russian Program, Ravel

Appropriately, the St. Petersburg String Quartet brought something outside the usual Germanic core repertory to kick off the Music Guild’s season at Cal State Northridge’s Performing Arts Center on Monday night--a mostly Russian program offset by Ravel. They also brought a new violist, Alexei Koptev, and, thanks to an enterprising local arts patron, members of the quartet were playing some precious instruments (including a 1712 Stradivarius violin) for their Southern California concerts.

This quartet clearly identifies with Shostakovich: In the early ‘90s, it began recording a very good cycle of the composer’s quartets for Sony’s St. Petersburg Classics label, getting through Nos. 1-5 and 7 before the label was scuttled (new remakes of Nos. 2 and 3 are now out on Hyperion). So it came as no surprise that the emotional core of the evening was occupied by Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8 (replacing the originally scheduled Quartet No . 4).

The Eighth is the most often performed of the cycle and the easiest with which to make an impression, given its intense autobiographical content (what with the composer’s musical signature, spelling out his initials in German, popping up everywhere and those three harrowing rapped chords that suggest the knocking of the secret police). Some quartets attack this work with driving white heat, and St. Petersburg’s certainly provided plenty of that in the second movement--yet the strongest impression was one of bleak, toneless resignation, all passion spent, which was ultimately quite moving.

Before settling into Shostakovich, the St. Petersburg made swift, rough-hewn work of the Ravel Quartet in F; even the passionately lyrical episodes, save for the ravishing opening theme, had an edge. In contrast to their recording made earlier in this decade, the St. Petersburg now plays the Tchaikovsky Quartet No. 1 in D shorn of repeats in the outer movements--with different phrasing, and more abandon, propulsion and rhapsodic volatility. The quartet’s sound didn’t blend as well as possible, though; perhaps playing with unfamiliar instruments in a room that lacks real acoustical warmth was the reason.

The encore was a most welcome (and inexplicable) rarity: Glazunov’s delightful, reel-like Novelette No. 2 (“Orientale”), played just a bit slowly yet with real affection and panache.

* The St. Petersburg String Quartet program repeats tonight at 8, Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., $7 to $24. (310) 552-3030.