MUSIC REVIEWS : SEQUOIA QUARTET CLOSES GETTY SERIES

The summer series of concerts at the J. Paul Getty Museum ended on Saturday with a program of late Romantic works, played by the Sequoia String Quartet. This was yet another installment, reportedly the last, of the cherished ensemble’s long goodby to the concert stage.

Two core components of the Czech nationalist repertory formed the bulk of the program: Smetana’s Quartet in E minor, “From My Life,” and the Dvorak Piano Quartet in A, Opus 81, the latter with Nathan Schwartz at the keyboard.

These were preceded by the “Langsamer Satz” (Slow Movement) of Anton Webern, 10 minutes of soothingly pretty post-Wagnerian hyper- schmaltz . The work, incidentally, is encountered with some frequency these days--not, one suspects, because of great intrinsic merit but rather because it goes against the stereotype of Webern as creator of frighteningly intense plink-plonk music.

Be that as it may, the Sequoians--violinists Peter Marsh and Miwako Watanabe, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Bonnie Hampton--tended appreciatively and elegantly to Webern’s youthful indulgence.

The Quartet’s way with Smetana’s autobiography in music--”a remembrance of my life and the catastrophe of deafness”--proved, for the most part, grandly impressive in tone and intent. The aural interest of this music tends to center on the lower voices, where Dembow and Hampton produced a flood of gorgeous dark sonority while attending as well to the keen rhythmic thrust of the music.

One had, nonetheless, to take exception to the finale, where a lack of intensity cheated us of the full effect of that most harrowing moment when the first violin’s piercing, climactic high E signifies the composer’s deafness.

In the Dvorak, the playing was more notable for vigor than for polished ensemble. Tempos were rushed in the fast portions, with balances going awry and Schwartz’s lively pianism producing more clinkers than the allowable minimum. Then too the acoustics of the Getty’s Inner Peristyle Garden, faultlessly benign earlier in the evening, became rebellious in the Dvorak, the increasing Pacific breezes rendering piano tone murky.