Quartets: Here Comes New Guard

With so many aspirants to the mantles of the Guarneri, Juilliard and Borodin string quartets--which have been with us for a combined total of some 130 years--there is justifiable fear that the traditions of the venerated old-timers will be lost amid a welter of styles presented by the numerous, often flashy newcomers.

Regarding the preservation of the Russian tradition represented by the Borodin (with two of its members in their twilight years)--there seems to be no cause for alarm. Consider the St. Petersburg String Quartet and Sony’s mid-priced “St. Petersburg Classics” series.

This youthful group has announced its presence on the international scene with the core Russian repertory: the two quartets of Alexander Borodin (64 097), the three completed ones and various fragments by Tchaikovsky (57 654, two CDs) and, for good measure, Shostakovich’s third, fifth and seventh quartets (66 592).

The St. Petersburgers, who will be appearing in our area next season, project a relaxed, natural rapport with the lyric essence of 19th-Century Romantic music. They don’t seek out dark corners or otherwise attempt to put a contemporary spin on the most familiar pieces, Borodin’s Second Quartet and Tchaikovsky’s first.

Like the best of yesterday’s Russian quartets, the St. Petersburg employs long bow-strokes and wide dynamic range (the group’s pianissimo is gorgeous). The quartet uses throbbing vibrato where appropriate but can also taper its sound to a slender wisp, as in the delicious eccentricities of the Shostakovich Third’s opening movement. Portamento is part of the arsenal, but used sparingly, as an expressive device.

And, as with the Borodin String Quartet, the combination of warmth and terseness these players bring to Shostakovich is a welcome antidote to the hyper-aggressive treatment some of today’s hot young groups find stylistically apposite.

Warning: Make certain that what you’re getting in the Tchaikovsky scores is the St. Petersburg String Quartet, not the rather scruffy St. Petersburg Philharmonic Quartet, which recently recorded the same music for the Audiophile Classics label.

That the locally based Angeles String Quartet is at least the equal in skill and interpretive smarts of most imported groups is well known among the happy few, and now that the Angeles has made its recorded debut (with more recordings promised) it may achieve sufficient cachet among Southland impresarios to enable us to hear the group as often as East Coast and Midwestern audiences do.

Its recorded repertory (on Koch 7325) comprises music by Viennese emigres to the United States: the sole String Quartet (1921) of Fritz Kreisler and the Third Quartet of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1945).

Kreisler’s two-hanky charmer is lushly chromatic in a way that recalls Wagner filtered through the Gallic lens of Cesar Franck and, perhaps coincidentally, the Puccini of the sweetly weepy “Crisantemi.”

Korngold’s opus is in the late-Romantic middle-European vein that has come to be regarded as typically Hollywood, and the composer in fact derived some of its themes from his film scores. It strikes me as altogether inferior to the Kreisler, with its wan suggestions of pre-serial Schoenberg and Korngold’s commonplace lyricism.

The Angeles Quartet’s performances are superb: faultlessly balanced, alternately propulsive and expansive, brightly incisive in tone and rhythm, brimming with temperament.

The American String Quartet, sorely underrepresented on recordings during the nearly 20 years of its existence, re-emerges with the initial installment (MusicMasters 67109) of an ambitious project: the complete quartets of Mozart, played on a gloriously mellow-sounding set of matched Stradivarius instruments from the collection of Herbert Axelrod.

There’s hardly a shortage of good or even superior performances of this music--here, the quartets in C, K. 157; E flat,K. 428; and B flat, K. 589. But the graciousness, rhythmic lift and elegance of tone that the New York-based ensemble brings to the music promise a Mozart cycle of outstanding quality. Highly recommended.