Rubio Quartet, Guitarist Blend Expressively

Paul Galbraith and the Rubio String Quartet, making its Los Angeles debut, hit the most popular points in the guitar/string quartet repertory Monday evening in an attractive program for the Music Guild at Cal State Northridge Center for the Performing Arts.

Boccherini’s “Fandango” Quintet is a malleable work, with competing editions and approaches. Galbraith and the Rubios took it straight up, stylish and spirited within an engaging context.

The Quintet by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, on the other hand, is a piece of very precisely registered interplay. Galbraith is a buttoned-down sort of virtuoso, who seemed happy in an assignment of meticulous detail and nuance. He was unobtrusively amplified, despite the supposed extra sound resources of his unusual eight-string guitar and the resonating box it is played on.

That guitar was made by the late British luthier David Rubio, as were all the instruments of the quartet. Violinists Dirk Van de Velde and Dirk Van den Hauwe, violist Marc Sonnaert and cellist Peter Devos played with supple rhythmic verve and alert sensitivity, though this was not the best of nights for first violinist Van de Velde.

The Belgian ensemble’s account of Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8 was intensely expressive and firmly pointed, finding a somber, reflective peace at the end.

A lean and briskly driven account of Schubert’s Quartet Movement in C minor completed the program.

Rubio String Quartet, with guitarist Paul Galbraith, tonight, Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., L.A. $7-$24. (310) 552-3030.