Cycle Logical

Musicians setting out to play all a composer’s work face a problem in how to do it. If they go chronologically, they’ll show the composer’s development, but maybe have to start with some weak or less-interesting pieces.

If they choose a different tack, which should it be?

That’s what the American String Quartet had to decide in its current six-season cycle of playing all the Mozart Quintets and Bartok Quartets at Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“We’ve been through both cycles many times over the years and have experimented with many different presentations,” violist Daniel Avshalomov said in a recent phone interview during a vacation in Portland, Ore.

“These [annual] concerts are so widely spaced apart, any message of a chronological approach would be diluted with the intervening months. So we decided to focus instead on what we hoped are coherent programs featuring different prominent works.”

The Sunday program--fifth in the consecutive series--will feature Mozart’s Quintet in C, K. 515 and Bartok’s Quartet No. 1. Completing the program will be Schubert’s “Quartettsatz” (Quartet Movement) in C minor, D. 701.

Guest violist Brian Dembow will team with Avshalomov, violinists Peter Winograd and Laurie Carney, and cellist David Geber for the quintet.

Mozart wrote six string quintets over the course of his short but prolific 35-year life. He wrote the first as a 17-year-old living in his native Salzburg. The last two, dating from his final months in Vienna, were his last chamber works for strings.

Bartok wrote six quartets over a 30-year period, beginning in his late 20s and ending with the last work he wrote in his beloved Hungary in 1939, as war and invasion loomed. Within a year, he and his wife would emigrate to the United States, where he would die of leukemia in New York City in 1945.

The program, Avshalomov said, juxtaposes Mozart’s “very mature work, of perfect balance and simplicity” with Bartok’s early work “with its fireworks galore, really singing and dancing” ending.

“In this case, we decided to let the young man’s music be heard first and finish with the more polished work, not end with the fireworks.”

Schubert’s “Quartettsatz”--seemingly the first movement of an “Unfinished” Quartet--is often cast as a concert opener, but the Americans will play it in the second half of the concert.

“A common misconception was that he was prevented from completing it by his early death,” Avshalomov said. “That’s not true. He wrote this and just went on.”

People might think it’s harder to write for five voices than for four, but that’s not the case, according to the violist.

“It’s easier to keep five balls in the air than four,” he said. “We know Mozart worked hard on his string quartets. He made quite an effort. Uncharacteristically, he had to go back and cross out, make two or three versions. But the quintets came out as fast as anything else he wrote.”

The problem was that Mozart was trying to live up to the extraordinarily high standards Haydn had established in his quartets.

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In turn, Haydn tried writing several quintets after hearing Mozart’s.

“But not one of them survives,” Avshalomov said. “I always thought, it’s turnabout. After seeing Mozart’s quintets, he thought, ‘There’s no point in wrestling with this boy. He’s got this field sewn up.’ ”

“A string quartet is really the perfect number,” the violist added. “Each of the four can be a soloist, an accompanist or can be a duo partner. The great skill is changing about those roles as quickly as possible.”

A striking part of the Mozart work is its slow movement dialogue between violin and viola, modeled upon Mozart’s earlier Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.

“The first violin and viola take turns singing,” Avshalomov said. “Peter and I get to fly very high in that movement.”

The work also contains “the biggest first movement of any classical piece until middle Beethoven,” he said. “The number of bars in the exposition of this movement, well, nothing had been done on that scope before. But it doesn’t seem ponderous.”

Bartok’s First Quartet tells a hidden story, one it shares with several works composed during 1908, including a two-movement violin concerto, the first of “Two Portraits” and the first Elegy.

“What’s important linking all these works is that we happen to know he had a tremendous and mysterious breakup with the first love of his life [Stefi Geyer], a fantastic violinist,” Avshalomov said.

“He had written the concerto for her, but before he finished it, the relationship dissolved. He poured his feelings into all these pieces.

“If you wonder about this kind of lamenting--the long falling sighs that open this quartet--now we know what he’s sighing about. That kind of thing we have no objection to sharing. It doesn’t cheapen the music. Especially for people who initially see the name of Bartok and get nervous, this helps them in.

“We know from experience that if there’s any thread of a story line or a hint of one, the audience would like to know about it.”

Now that the Mozart and Bartok cycle is coming to an end, the Americans are already thinking ahead.

“We’ve been muttering with Aaron [Egigian, senior director of music programming at the center] about another project. We would be delighted to do one.

“When you do multi-concert programs like these cycles, you get to know people. It’s like playing for a room full of friends.”

Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at https://chris.pasles@latimes.com

SHOW TIMES

“The American String Quartet will play works by Mozart, Schubert and Bartok at 4 p.m. Sunday in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $36. (714) 556-2787.