Angeles String Quartet Plays Splendid Haydn

One of these days--which probably means in a year or more--pokey Philips Classics will start releasing the complete cycle of Haydn quartets that the Angeles String Quartet has been busily recording for some time now. It’s an infuriating wait, but the delay has its good side. We in Los Angeles have the luck of hearing the local ensemble performing Haydn regularly in venues all over town as it works up the quartets for the studio. But once these recordings hit the stores, look out. The Angeles will undoubtedly be in such demand the world over that we may seldom hear the group after that.

One of the lucky occasions was Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater, where the Angeles has a series. The program, which consisted of an early Haydn quartet and two mature ones, set out to do something the ensemble has become particularly noted for, which is to illuminate a marvel of music.

Haydn wrote 83 string quartets, including one that was unfinished. He fathered the medium, producing what is considered to be the first modern-style string quartet when he was 18 as an experiment, and then, throughout a long and astonishing career (that included 104 symphonies along with tons of other music) raised it to its highest potential.

In the early Quartet, Opus 9, No. 5, with which the Angeles began its program Wednesday, Haydn was still just beginning to discover what two violins, a viola and a cello (played here by, respectively, Kathleen Lenski, Steven Miller, Brian Dembow and Stephen Erdody) can do. He followed convention, top instrument (first violin) playing melody, bottom instrument (cello) giving a clear bass line, the other two filling in four-part harmony.

Yet by the time he had reached the late quartet known as “The Rider” (Op. 74, No.3), which concluded the evening, Haydn was clearly anticipating what we think of as Beethoven’s harmonic innovations, as Miller had the ensemble demonstrate to the audience in his engaging live program notes. Even more remarkable, as the program--which also included the Quartet Op. 64, No. 1--also so well revealed, Haydn never seemed to run out of interesting ideas. Every movement in every work tries something new. In “The Rider” we get, besides the deep Beethovenian slow movement, two lively, bouncing, inventive outer movements (which give the work its title) full of special instrumental effects.

The Angeles, which plays the music flawlessly, is a personable quartet more than a quartet with strong personality. Others make a bit more of Haydn’s jokes, his musical surprises and his strangeness. But it is only a matter of emphasis. The Angeles misses nothing in the music and offers the great pleasure of a well-integrated sound and exact intonation. It’s the kind of playing that makes one want to hear quartet after quartet after quartet all night long. Haydn’s quartets, after all, are highly addictive, and all-Haydn programs like those given by the Angeles are something that few other ensembles do or could do as well if they tried.

* The Angeles Quartet continues its Haydn cycle at the museum Jan. 15 and April 30, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, all concerts at 8 p.m. $6-$15. (213) 857-6010.