Music : Lyric Quartet Opens Strawberry Creek Fest

Although recessionary financial constraints have reduced the eighth annual Malibu Strawberry Creek Festival to just one week this year, it opened on firmly positive notes. The Lyric Piano Quartet launched the event with a concert generous in time and spirit, before a full and enthusiastic house Saturday at the Smothers Theatre of Pepperdine University.

Violinist Glenn Dicterow, violist Karen Dreyfus, cellist James Kreger and pianist Gerald Robbins began the proceedings with a cool, slightly subdued account of Mozart’s G-minor Quartet, K. 478. Their quest may have been for lyric introspection, but they found merely cautious formality, albeit handsomely presented.

Things heated up immediately, however, with Faure’s C-minor Quartet, Opus 15, a pertinent foil to the Mozart. There the ensemble introduced big-boned sound, and an assertive interpretive stance that did not preclude suave inflection and shifting planes of focus.

Humor in a wide textural range made an ingratiating entrance with the Scherzo, while the Adagio found the ensemble in its most radiant mode, poised and reflective. There was vehemence to spare for the finale, but not at the expense of clarity and purpose.

Dvorak’s Quintet in A elicited an equal measure of articulate passion. Filling out the ensemble was violinist Harold Dicterow, father of Glenn and for 45 years a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The effort was not uniformly tidy technically, and lost direction at times in the labyrinthine repeats of the Dumka. But when it was right, it was very right--transparent in texture and fiercely motivated.

Following a trio of free chamber music concerts in various locations, the festival closes Saturday, with an orchestral concert back at Smothers Theatre in Malibu.