Alexander Group Comes Through

A stalwart proponent of chamber music in Los Angeles, the Music Guild opened its 53rd season on what could have been a misstep, but bad turned to good. A hand injury prevented an appearance by the originally planned Lafayette String Quartet, and the San Francisco-based Alexander String Quartet was able to pinch-hit on short notice.

As heard at Pierce College on Monday, the first of three area performances, there was no musical harm done. Even the program remained the same, with two Beethoven quartets framing Barber’s famed string quartet. The group, founded in 1982, boasted a sensitive collective voice and a refined dynamic sense that worked well for both Beethoven’s Quartet in D, Opus 18, No. 3, with its classicist tinge, and the darker Quartet in E minor, Opus 59, No. 2. With this 1806 work, Beethoven’s romantic instincts were beginning to flower and deepen, and likewise the group’s expressive range.

The quartet also gave an admirably controlled reading of Barber’s 1936 String Quartet. As the source material of what Barber later transcribed as the Adagio for Strings, it is one of those pieces best known for its later incarnation.

That central elegy, sad and luscious in the Alexander’s hands, is memorably familiar and moving; the restless first movement and the final allegro seem irrelevant, almost distracting, afterthoughts. Such is the lure of revisionist thinking, and the power of a hit.

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* The Alexander String Quartet repeats this program tonight at 8, Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St. $7-$22. (310) 552-3030.