From polite to passionate

National differences of playing somehow survive in our increasingly homogenized world. Witness the Vlach Quartet Prague in its California debut Friday at the Doheny Mansion as part of the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series presented by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College.

The vaunted middle-European style of impassioned, dark and richly-blended sound was healthily evident in a three-part program that included Beethoven’s Quartet No. 16, Ervin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces for String Quartet and Dvorak’s Quartet No. 13.

The ensemble was led by Jana Vlachova, daughter of Joseph Vlach, founder of the original quartet, who died in 1988. Her colleagues were violinist Karel Stadtherr, violist Petr Verner and cellist Mikael Ericsson.

Verner was the madman of the group, rocking and swaying in his chair and revving his friends out of the mellow, polite start they took in the first movement of Beethoven’s final quartet, which opened the program. Once galvanized, there was no stopping them, and that extended to reaching the ethereal heights in the slow movement of that work.

They also showed a natural affinity in the two other works, both written by compatriots. Schulhoff was a Czech composer who died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942, doubly marked as a Communist and a Jew. His Five Pieces, composed in 1923, consists of witty takes on dances of his homeland and other nations. The Quartet played them with lusty vitality and swagger, or evocative dreaminess, as required, always with precision in ensemble.

But it was Dvorak’s Quartet No. 13 that afforded them their greatest opportunities. From feathery sweetness to gutsy earthiness, from joy in homecoming to sadness over years of absence, the players painted a huge, symphonic landscape. Perhaps they missed some opportunities for subtlety, but none for sweep and impact.

For their single encore, they played Dvorak’s Humoresque in G, a work long travestied in cartoons and performances played for laughs, but beguiling and worthy in the hands of these artists.