A Bit of Haydn, From Musicians Who Know a Lot

Plans for the first Ein Kleines HaydnFest (A Little Haydn Festival), held one year ago at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, called for the members of the Angeles String Quartet to mingle with the audience at the lunch break. Things didn’t quite work out that way.

“We needed to cool out and relax,” recalled cellist Stephen Erdody in a cellular phone interview as he drove from his Pasadena home to a sound studio in Culver City.

“Haydn may not be as technically or physically demanding as a Brahms quartet or late Beethoven quartet,” Erdody, 42, said. “But it’s demanding in terms of concentration. Everything needs to be so crystalline, everyone knows when something is wrong.

“Ensembly, it’s as tough as anything.”

“Ensembly”? Sounds like a word Tigger would use.

The second daylong Haydn festival takes place Sunday at the same venue. On the agenda are a Viennese coffee-and-strudel hour outside Founders Hall, a talk on Haydn by classical music writer Herbert Glass inside Founders Hall, and a luncheon in the park adjoining South Coast Repertory--bring your own picnic or special order a box lunch.

Oh, and before and after lunch, the group will play six Haydn quartets in Founders Hall: Opus 17, No. 2 in F; Opus 71, No. 1 in B-flat; Opus 77, No. 2 in F; Opus 9, No. 4 in D minor; Opus 55, No. 3 in B-flat minor; and Opus 74, No. 3 in C minor, “The Rider.”

According to Erdody, Haydn wrote 68 works in the genre. “Unless they discover some new Haydn quartets, we can only do this another 10 more times,” he noted.

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The Angeles String Quartet--violinists Kathleen Lenski and Steven Miller, violist Brian Dembow and Erdody--was formed in 1988. Erdody quit Orange County’s Pacific Symphony in 1990 to devote more time to the group and to studio activities; he and his wife, Julie, an intensive-care oncology nurse and recorder player, maintain a condo in Dana Point.

The Angeles Quartet now performs between 40 and 50 concerts per year, and is engaged in a five-year recording project for Philips--supported by the New York-based Joseph Haydn Society--encompassing all of the Haydn quartets. The foursome has so far recorded 27 of them, mostly from the early and late periods.

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“It feels like we’ve made such headway, yet we’re still less than halfway,” Erdody said. “That puts a damper on a lot of other repertoire we’d like to be doing. It’s like, ‘Tuesday, we’ve got to learn another Haydn quartet, guys.’ ” They nevertheless managed to release quartets by Fritz Kreisler and Erich Korngold on the Koch International label last year.

Initial Haydn releases are set for 1998, and the project should be complete by 2000.

Though the group is currently focusing on works from the composer’s middle period, Erdody believes that such descriptions as “middle period” can be hazy in Haydn’s case--and should have no connotations as to quality.

“Unlike most composers, where you can see a beginning, middle and late period, Haydn is rather mature when he started writing for the quartet,” he said. “You see the development of the quartet rather than the maturing of the composer. We found early quartets that sound remarkably late, late quartets that sound remarkably early. . . .”

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Perhaps “Papa” Haydn, considered the father of the string quartet, can also be thought of, in this form at least, as the Mama of invention.

“From Opus 54, No. 1 to Opus 54, No. 2, it’s almost another composer, not another opus number,” Erdody said. “And No. 3 is another ballgame entirely. He’s constantly changing, constantly. . . .

“We really haven’t found a bad Haydn quartet. We found some that we thought seemed weak, but then when we lived with them, we realized that they were fairly innovative, harmonically incredibly interesting. . . . We grew to love them as much as the others.”

* The Angeles String Quartet presents Ein Kleines HaydnFest II (A Little Haydn Festival) Sunday in and around the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. $20-$34. (714) 556-2787. (Box lunch, $15; lunch orders, [714] 556-2787, Ext. 240.)