Intrepid quartet pays tribute to Ives

Armadillos are timid animals. So says the Encyclopedia Britannica. That conclusion was apparently based upon consideration of nine genera and 20 species of mammals of the family Dasypodidae, order edentata. But the Britannica missed one -- the Armadillo String Quartet. It is not timid at all.

In its 24 years, the local string quartet has gladly gone where others feared. This is the dogged quartet that once played a 34 1/2-hour marathon of Haydn’s 68 string quartets. This is the doughty white-watering quartet that has used the Grand Canyon as a concert hall. This is the dotty quartet that made its Carnegie Hall debut by performing the world premiere of P.D.Q. Bach’s “Moose” Quartet.

So leave it to the Armadillos, as the group likes to refer to itself, to be the only local organization properly acknowledging a significant anniversary in American music. Next Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of Charles Ives’ death, and Tuesday night the Armadillos played a program devoted to the composer’s string quartet music.

Few people showed up at the Colburn School’s Zipper Concert Hall -- even two members of the quartet were unavailable for the engagement. But it takes more than that to faze this particularly plucky species of the armor-clad critter. With the help of two last-minute substitutions, the Armadillos offered two hours of Ives. Both Ives string quartets were played, along with other works arranged for string quartet, including a selection of songs sung by soprano Juliana Gondek.

The neglect of Ives locally is mysterious. In the 1930s and ‘40s -- when the eccentric, pioneering Yankee composer, now hailed as the father of American music, was all but unknown in New York -- he was regularly performed in Los Angeles at the Monday Evening Concerts. Nicolas Slonimsky conducted Ives at the Hollywood Bowl in 1933 (which meant that the Los Angeles Philharmonic discovered Ives nearly two decades before the New York Philharmonic did). But that was then; don’t get your hopes up for anything Ivesian at the Bowl this summer.

The Armadillo program was intended as a kind of Ives survey. The first half represented the composer from Danbury, Conn., at his most conventional. The First String Quartet (“From the Salvation Army”) and the Intermezzo from the cantata “The Celestial Country” (a rare instance of Ives dreck) date from his Yale years at the end the 19th century. The voice is already distinct as the rebellious student quotes hymn tunes but peppers them with dissonances and slightly off rhythms that seem tame today but drove his teachers nuts.

The Second String Quartet, however, is Ives at his most Ivesian, which means knotty, dissonant, irreverent and spiritually intense. Each instrument is meant to be a unique character (the second violin is a goody-goody who, when in doubt, quotes Beethoven). The instruments argue, fight, then get over it and go outside in the last movement (“The Call of the Mountains”) to ponder the firmament in all its mystical glory.

The head Armadillo, violinist Barry Socher, also offered his own string quartet arrangements of the Fugue from Ives’ Fourth Symphony; “Washington’s Birthday,” from Ives’ “Holidays” Symphony; and five songs. The fugue was a curiosity. An earlier version of it, which Ives later dropped, once opened the First Quartet. “Washington’s Birthday” -- misty music hijacked by popular songs -- worked well as chamber music. But then, Ives himself was famous for fooling around with his music, always changing things over the years. One drawback to the song arrangements, artful and interesting though they were, was that they seemed to encourage Gondek to assume an overly grand manner.

Tuesday’s substitute players, second violinist Connie Kupka and violist Andrew Picken, couldn’t have been expected to bring quite as much richly expressive, obstinately Ivesian character to their parts as did Socher and cellist Armen Ksajikian. And no one goes to hear the Armadillos expecting flawless intonation. But the demanding program was more than capably played by musicians alert to a composer of many levels.

At its and Ives’ best, as in the last movement of the Second Quartet, the evening’s performance rose to a level of transcendence.