Juilliard Quartet Seeks Its Old Heat

Even without founding first violinist and sparkplug Robert Mann, who left in 1997, the Juilliard String Quartet keeps on running--and it is here this week for a mini-residency at USC doing its bit for music new, old and in between, with public performances and master classes. The quartet’s opening concert at Bovard Auditorium on Wednesday night was followed by an open rehearsal of Ralph Shapey’s String Quartet No. 10 on Thursday--and tonight it plays its transcription of J.S. Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue.”

But on Wednesday night, something essential was missing from the music.

There were problems with blurred, delayed attacks in the opening Mozart Quartet in B flat, K. 589--and the musicians had to retune their instruments frequently through the performance. But then, you don’t necessarily go to Juilliard concerts expecting super-precise, absolutely in-tune ensemble playing all the time.

What you do expect--or did expect--from this foursome is drive, coiled intensity, visceral excitement, a sense of abandon that despite some mellowing over the decades, could still reinvigorate old classics with an urban flavor. These were the crucial missing ingredients Wednesday, particularly in the sprawling, nearly symphonic expanses of Schubert’s Quartet No. 15 in G, D. 887, whose scherzo and finale surprisingly lacked crispness and compelling rhythms.

The closest the Juilliard came to regaining its edge was in Bartok’s Quartet No. 6--and a good thing, too, for this was the group that essentially put the Bartok cycle on the map in the late 1940s, eventually recording it three times (the second cycle from the 1960s being best).

While No. 6 has reminders of the acerbic experiments of the middle quartets, its most compelling feature is the melancholy motive that leads off each movement--and violist Samuel Rhodes, now the Juilliard’s senior statesman (he joined in 1969), stated it with especially bleak eloquence in the first movement. Again, the old urgency was muted, but Bartok still managed to communicate.

*

Juilliard String Quartet at Bovard Auditorium, USC, 3551 Trousdale Parkway. Tonight at 7. $25; seniors and students, $12. (213) 740-2167.