Studio Players’ Quartet Rises Again, and Meets Same High Standards

A landmark in Southern California musical history, the Hollywood String Quartet (1947-61) was an ensemble of Hollywood studio players that came to represent that breed’s high instrumental achievement and lofty artistic ideals. Violinist Felix Slatkin and cellist Eleanor Aller--the parents of the American conductor Leonard Slatkin--were founding members of the prestigious, well-remembered ensemble.

With some of the same ideals, and certainly the aim of reaching the artistic level of that earlier group, four current studio players--violinists Clayton Haslop and Rafael Rishik, violist David Walther and cellist Paul Cohen--have formed the New Hollywood String Quartet.

After one out-of-town tryout, over the weekend, the ensemble made its official debut Tuesday night in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

It was an auspicious and happy occasion, during which the new ensemble lived up to its name. The four players produce music both beautiful and immaculate, technically impeccable and artistically well-considered. This first outing revealed no mechanical weaknesses, or early faux pas of an interpretive nature: Long and thorough preparation and serious planning clearly preceded this performance.

Repertory defines intention as well as character, and this program nicely contrasted lightness, seriousness and a full musical range of interests.

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The peak of the evening was a probing reading of Schubert’s kaleidoscopic “Rosamunde” Quartet, D. 804. Here, all the players’ resources came to bear on one of the most touching icons of the repertory, with balances, sound, architecture and sensibility in place.

Haydn’s sober and joyous Quartet in D, Opus 76, No. 5, showed off not only the ensemble’s emotional facets, but its dynamic parameters and mechanical resources as well--speed and lightness, mellowness of tone and long-limbed lyricism.

Haydnesque variety in a vivid contemporary language marked the world premiere performance of Tania Gabrielle French’s String Quartet No. 2, “Communications.” French’s mordant, witty and compressed style instantly engages the listener; the ensemble contributed appropriate color and breeziness to the new work (composer French and first violinist Haslop are married to each other).

Finally, a piquant encore underlined the ensemble’s Hollywood day jobs: a poignant arrangement of a Randy Newman song from “Toy Story II.”

* The New Hollywood String Quartet plays a program of music by Mozart, Shostakovich and Smetana April 3 at 8 p.m. in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School, 200 S. Grand Ave., L.A., (310) 581-2552. $25.