Penderecki Quartet Revels in the Modern

Just as it did last year, the Penderecki String Quartet is presenting a doubleheader of concerts. The two programs demonstrate a commitment to the idea that an ensemble can prosper on both sides of the line separating contemporary music and standard repertory.

Tonight at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the quartet will serve up a well-rounded meal of Mozart, Bartok and Brahms. At its Monday Evening Concert appearance at LACMA, however, the group played late 20th century music with both fervency and sensitivity, beautifully stating its case.

Fittingly, the quartet opened with the music of Henryk Gorecki, the best-known Polish composer aside from its namesake. Gorecki’s Quartet No. 2, “Quasi una Fantasia,” a fascinating work that shifts between brusquely energetic momentum and mournful cloudscapes. The group expressed the duality with alternating gruffness and ghostliness.

A central place was reserved for Giacinto Scelsi, the Italian composer whose ascetic, texturally intensive work approaches modernist mysticism. His 1964 Quartet No. 4 requires the musicians to retune their instruments, creating unorthodox intervals and unveiling new resonant possibilities. Drama and wonder are encoded into the tiniest nuances.

The players traded in de-tuned instruments for electric ones on George Crumb’s “Black Angels (Images I),” a 1970 requiem inspired by the Vietnam War. Like the Scelsi, but with a character all its own, the piece derives a new emotionality from colors and abstract effects created by the quartet.

* Penderecki String Quartet, tonight, 8 p.m., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., $5-$15. (323) 857-6010.