Music Reviews : Chilingirian Quartet Opens Music Guild Season

On the occasion of their appearance on Wednesday to open the new season of Music Guild concerts in the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, the Chilingirian String Quartet faced up to one of the mightiest challenges in the repertory, Schubert’s vast Quartet in G, D. 887.

Schubert’s technical demands here make even those of the late-Beethoven quartets pale in comparison and it is structurally among the most intractable works in the repertory as well. This rapturous monster remains, however, one of glories of Romantic chamber music and the London-based ensemble--violinists Levon Chilingirian and Mark Butler, violist Louise Williams, cellist Philip De Groote--played it with a thrilling blend of rugged intensity and full-throated songfulness, boldly projecting its often grating harmonies even at the occasional expense--well-warranted--of ensemble elegance.

Musical problems surfaced during the evening’s second large work, the F-minor Piano Quintet of Brahms.

Given Gerald Robbins’ self-effacing, unincisive pianism--an exception being his reasonably heated contribution to the Scherzo--at an instrument that seemed to be heard through several layers of cotton batting, Brahms was hardly given his due.

Under the circumstances, too much burden was placed on the strings, whose frequently strident, uncoordinated playing did not jibe with the secure, rich-toned and handsomely nuanced execution displayed in the big Schubert quartet and in the same composer’s brief, potent C-minor “Quartettsatz,” with which the very long evening had begun.