Mendelssohn Quartet grapples with Beethoven

In the wake of recent personnel changes, the Mendelssohn String Quartet arrived at Cal State Northridge on Monday night, in the Music Guild series, with a program weighted toward Beethoven. Miriam Fried is now the first violinist and Ulrich Eichenauer occupies the viola chair, joining second violinist Nicholas Mann and cellist Marcy Rosen.

By now, it shouldn’t be necessary to justify the inclusion of the Grosse Fuge, the original but often deleted finale of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13, in a performance of the quartet -- as Mann did in a brief talk. Stravinsky may have been right when he said that this grinding, driving movement will always be contemporary music. But it is also life-affirming music, not at all as forbidding as music appreciation mavens insist it is, and the Mendelssohns grappled with its powerful rhythms at a nervous tempo.

Although the players displayed some edgy, scrappy ensemble work in No. 13, they found their groove immediately after intermission. First, there was a fluid rendition of Mozart’s Quartet No. 21, with a slow movement that had a singing quality which made it seem like a long-lost aria from a late Mozart opera. At the close came a pointed, sharply characterized version of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 16, with Fried heightening the wildness of the scherzo’s obsessive central dance and shaping the climax of the slow movement ardently, beautifully.

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Mendelssohn String Quartet

Where: Beverly Hills High School, 241 Moreno Ave., Beverly Hills

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Price: $9-$26

Contact: (323) 954-0404