Corigliano Quartet blends old, new works

John Corigliano, a living composer, has the rare distinction of having a string quartet named after him, even though he isn’t particularly prolific in that genre. Nevertheless, the Corigliano Quartet seems to take his name as an inspiration to promote new American quartets alongside the old European masters.

They did precisely that in the Cerritos Center’s Jose Iturbi Gold Medal Series on Monday night, sandwiching the new Quartet for Strings by Shafer Mahoney -- a world premiere -- between familiar items by Beethoven and Smetana.

Indeed, the 28-minute piece fit the old mold securely, cast in four movements with the traditional scherzo, slow movement and rondo-finale, written in an audience-friendly, tuneful, sometimes lush musical language.

Mahoney, who teaches at the City University of New York, offered his most inventive ideas in the lengthy first movement, a set of variations that reaches a peak in a central passage that suggests the wide-open spaces of Roy Harris. But the piece seems to run short of fuel in the restless finale, unsure of where to go yet unable to sit still.

Elsewhere, the performers gave Beethoven’s Quartet No. 1 in F a clear-cut, classical approach, with the exception of a bit too much melodrama in the adagio movement. Their impassioned treatment of Smetana’s “From My Life” Quartet was most effective in the finale’s harrowing depiction of the composer’s deafness -- and least convincing in a somewhat lurching treatment of the second movement.

As a deflating bit of in-your-face sass after the earnest emotion of Smetana, the Coriglianos signed off with Ives’ tiny, jokey, gleefully abrasive scherzo “Holding Your Own” -- easily the most ear-stretching thing on the program.