Ysaye String Quartet Gives Engaging, Efficient Concert

Hidden in the Student Union complex at Cal State Northridge, lost in a maze of video-game rooms, pool tables, student lounges and even a Pub (with a capital P), in a quiet and hard-to-find upper floor there’s a small concert hall.

This hall--it seems even to have no name--is acoustically welcoming and visually attractive. Several times a year it hosts events by the northern branch of Music Guild, which otherwise gives its concerts at Cal State Long Beach and in the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre. Monday night, it held an engaging program given by the Ysaye String Quartet.

The four players of the French ensemble--violinists Guillaume Sutre and Luc-Marie Aguera, violist Miguel da Silva and cellist Marc Coppey--cannot boast huge resources of tone or larger-than-life personalities. As a group, they are efficient, self-effacing and musically direct. They do not grab the listener by the throat; in fact, they seldom grab the listener at all.

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Yet they are a pleasure to hear and they never stand in the way of the composer. Monday night--with repeats scheduled at the other Music Guild venues Tuesday and tonight--they aided and abetted Haydn, Brahms and Dvorak with tight professionalism.

Best came first, in Haydn’s inspired Quartet in E, Opus 54, No. 3, a gem in any circumstances, particularly rewarding here. Brahms’ B-flat Quartet, Opus 67, went along nicely if passively. All it needed to make it truly effective was more aggression, fatter tones from all four of the players and a sense of spontaneity.

Ayke Agus, the justifiably admired Southern California pianist, joined the quartet for a happy traversal of Dvorak’s Quintet in A, Opus 81. With abundant resources of plangent tone, effortless technique and collaborative skills, Agus is a wonderful pianist but not a leader. What this piece needs--and received from none of the five players--was a genuine pushiness, big ego, more elbow and less wrist. Politeness doesn’t produce thrills.

* The Ysaye String Quartet plays the same program for Music Guild at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., tonight at 8. $5-$24. (310) 552-3030.