Ying String Quartet Nears Perfection With Dvorak

Performance being the fickle thing that it is, perfection is seldom a critical issue. But for the enchanted space of Dvorak’s “American” Quartet, Monday evening at the Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center, the Ying String Quartet came as close to the ideal as possible, delivering chamber music of astonishing, refreshing exaltation and exhilaration.

Handsomely balanced tone and texture, rhythms living happily within a compelling and interactive framework of tempos, pertinent and unexaggerated phrasing--this performance had it all. And consistently, for all four well-considered movements. Dvorak’s Opus 96 is a big piece, and this was seriously big, generous playing.

There is an element of luck in laying down in one take a performance that would be a fondly visited favorite in any record collection. But the Yings--a quartet of Chinese American siblings--have the technique to narrow the odds. Violinists Timothy Ying and Janet Ying, violist Phillip Ying and cellist David Ying produce a warm, flexible mid-weight sound that they wield with great intelligence, accuracy and flair.

For the rest of their program, the first in a series for the Music Guild, the Yings proved mortal enough on the to-err-is-human scale. Of course, Beethoven’s C-sharp-minor Quartet, Opus 131, has been a humbling experience for many an ensemble. The searching, questioning character of the first half of this enigmatic work brought out a cautious and hesitantly inward side in the Yings. The back half then found them eager and expressive, but occasionally coarse in sound and gesture.

In a program change wittily announced by Phillip Ying, the quartet opened with Mendelssohn’s Opus 12, in E-flat. The high-velocity scurrying at the center of the Canzonetta was a bit smudged, but generally this was a vibrant, assured reading. Not at the level to come in terms of rarefied commitment and execution, but sturdy, ingratiating playing of spirit and

grace.

* Ying Quartet presents the same program tonight at 8, Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., $19-$24, (310) 552-3030.