Amati String Quartet Applies the Polish

Introducing important, world-class chamber ensembles to the public is just one of the missions of Chamber Music in Historic Sites, the visible arm of the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College.

That mission is carried out several times each season; Friday night it brought to the elegant Doheny Mansion in downtown Los Angeles the debut of the accomplished Amati String Quartet from Switzerland.

It was worth the wait to hear this ensemble formed 19 years ago, which has undergone personnel changes in that time. Even among more famous, high-achieving quartets, this one is a standout.

The playing of its four members, as heard in a demanding program of works by Haydn, Janacek and Schumann, proved consistently impassioned, highly disciplined and technically unassailable.

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In exhilaratingly polished performances, the players--violinists Willi Zimmermann, Katarzyna Nawrotek, violist Nicolas Corti and cellist Claudius Herrmann--showed expertise in and affinity for differing styles and levels of dramatic involvement.

For instance, their Haydn, the Quartet in C, Opus 50, No. 2, became thoroughly realized, never detached yet elegant of manner.

It contrasted strongly with their Janacek, the Second Quartet, “Intimate Letters,” which emerged emotionally overwrought but in no way overstated, and wildly exuberant or deeply thoughtful as required.

To close the program, the youngish ensemble from Zurich offered Schumann’s relatively benign Quartet in A, Opus 41, No. 3, from his prolific and stable year of 1842, and demonstrated an appropriately youthful ardor within the emotional middle ground, thus giving deep, untroubled pleasures to the listener.