MUSIC REVIEW : L.A. String Quartet Interprets Inventive Twists of Haydn

The Angeles String Quartet--Kathleen Lenski, violin; Steven Miller, violin; Brian Dembow, viola; and Stephen Erdody, cello--continues to give Joseph Haydn his enormous due by regularly presenting the composer’s still underappreciated work to a growing circle of admirers. The evidence was there in a well-attended concert on Wednesday, the first of the home-grown ensemble’s three evenings this season in the Bing Auditorium of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The event constituted a mini-survey of Haydn’s progress through a form he virtually invented, from the halting Quartet in C, Op. 9, No. 1, with its dark flashes of inspiration, to the complete mastery of the work in G, Op. 54, No. 1, which encapsulates all that astonishes and delights in the composer’s mature style. This was followed by Op. 71, No. 1, shot through with outre harmonies, structural convolutions and thematic dead-ends: a wildly fascinating score that approaches incoherence.

Finally, in what might be called an integral encore--proof that Haydn hadn’t lost his marbles--there was the formal perfection of the dashing, dazzling finale of the “Horseman” Quartet from Op. 74.

In all of this, we had the indispensable Angeles Quartet’s probing interpretations, well-tuned, incisive in rhythm and tone, alert to every devilish--and angelic--twist of Haydn’s infinitely inventive mind.