Amati String Quartet Displays Its Range

After an incandescent local debut on the Chamber Music in Historic Sites concert series 18 months ago, the Amati String Quartet returned to open the 2001-2002 Sites series Sunday afternoon. The four Swiss musicians once again played brilliantly, this time in the spectacular visual surroundings of Silvertop, a hilltop residence in Silver Lake created by John Lautner in 1957.

The program included Haydn’s Quartet in D, Opus 50, No. 6, Schubert’s “Quartettsatz” and Shostakovich’s Seventh Quartet. This was a hefty yet brief agenda that lasted just over 40 minutes but revealed the full range and myriad attributes of this ensemble.

Violinists Willi Zimmermann and Katarine Navrotek, violist Nicolas Corti and cellist Claudius Hermann clearly think alike, complement each other’s musical personalities and feel the same about each work they essay. Haydn’s breezy but hard-thinking expressiveness, Schubert’s stormy youthfulness and the complex and dichotomous emotionalism of Shostakovich’s pithy memorial for his wife--each piece elicited from the players their full attention and deepest probing. Playing at this level defies analysis: Which comes first, the technical supremacy, the intellectual understanding or the heartfelt identification? Each stands out, yet each integrates with the others.

Adding dimensions to the engrossing performances were excellent contributions of three writers, Greg Hettmansberger, Robert Winter and Mary Beth Crain.