Armadillo String Quartet Gets Into Some Serious Mischief

For its 20th-anniversary concert Monday night, the Armadillo String Quartet filled the Church of the Lighted Window in La Can~ada with music that suggested what makes this iconoclastic foursome tick. First and foremost, they like to have a good time; even saying their name automatically produces a smile. In recalling their outlandish stunt of performing all of Haydn’s string quartets in a 34 1/2-hour marathon, they played the jaunty Quartet in G, Opus 76, No. 1, with some scrappy passages offset by a full awareness of Haydn’s mischievous humor.

Their unofficial composer in residence is Peter Schickele, the discoverer of the mythical P.D.Q. Bach, whose more-or-less serious side they probed with his Quartet No. 2 (“In Memoriam”). While Schickele could not resist throwing in some irreverent touches such as boogie-derived ostinatos in the Scherzo, there were no ironies or jokes in the concluding Elegy, which sustains an eerie, haunted feeling of tension.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Schickele’s alter ego P.D.Q. Bach has inspired first violinist/composer Barry Socher to conduct some research of his own. One of his latest “finds” is “Prelude to the Afternoon on a Farm” by Debussy Fields (get it?), in which barnyard tunes and classical snippets were woven together in a hilarious, deftly constructed bit of tomfoolery.

Finally, the Armadillo turned serious again with a vengeance, tackling the great, galvanic Bartok Quartet No. 3 for the first time. And here too they went their own way, slowing the first movement way down to reveal unsuspected, drawn-out lyrical qualities, with much contrast between delicate passages and fiercely rhythmic strokes of violence.