MUSIC REVIEW : Angeles Quartet and Zukovsky Offer Heavenly Mozart

In the practice of musical journalism, analyzing virtue can be a losing game.

Having made a stack of superlatives, the writer begins to lose credibility; having described an emotional occasion in emotional terms, the observer’s “objectivity” comes into question. The problem of how to report a superior event in superior terms remains nearly insoluble.

That problem arose again Tuesday night at the Irvine Barclay Theatre when, halfway through its seasons-bridging Mozart Celebration series, the Angeles Quartet closed its June program with a seraphic performance of the Clarinet Quintet, K. 581.

The catalyst was Michele Zukovsky, who still looks to be a young woman, yet has been for the last 30 years a principal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In mellowness, in a potent sense of inevitability, and in an overall feeling of improvisation, this performance found and cherished both the analyzable and the indescribable beauties of the piece.

In a year during which Amadeus-satiation is an ever-present danger, it was a reminder of Mozart’s real place in the world--above it--and of his spiritual disconnection from the mundane.

Of course, it was a performance built on a solid foundation of technical excellence and architectonic details from all five players: clarinetist Zukovsky, violinists Kathleen Lenski and Roger Wilkie, violist Brian Dembow and cellist Stephen Erdody. And on the deepest sort of musical relationships between them.

The bonus in this touching experience was the splendidly played first half, which the Angeles gave over to Schubert’s early E-flat Quartet, Opus 125, and to Shostakovich’s searing Eighth Quartet.

Using its admirably broad and colorful range of dynamics astutely as well as intuitively, the ensemble probed the emotional depths of one of Shostakovich’s most affecting works. It may or may not be a programmatic piece, but it incontrovertibly follows a tight scenario; this the four players moved through, expertly.

Schubert’s diffident Opus 125 began the evening soberly; one might have expected a more lighthearted approach from these players. Yet, as they began the intensities of the Shostakovich quartet, their earlier distractedness--not actually inappropriate--became clear.

At the other end of the event, the five players took an encore in the form of the Menuetto from Weber’s B-flat Quintet, Opus 182.

The program was scheduled to be repeated, Wednesday night at Occidental College in Eagle Rock.

The Angeles’ next Irvine Barclay Theatre appearance, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, is Sept. 15, with pianist Jeffrey Kahane.