Spirited Takacs Quartet Lets Loose Blazing Power

Leos Janacek was the classic late bloomer among composers, not really coming into his own until he was 62--and only then, over the last dozen years of his life, did he truly display individual genius. Likewise, his reputation has been late-blooming as well, for his music has taken a permanent hold in the repertory only in the last quarter-century, 50 years after his death.

So now it is no longer a novelty to encounter his extraordinary, quirky String Quartet No. 1 (“Kreutzer Sonata”) on a touring string quartet program. It poses an irresistible opportunity for quartets to let down their hair, so to speak, and indulge in some fits of temporary madness--like those icy bumblebee-like tremolos in the third movement, or the folk dance that tries to erupt in abrupt fits and starts in the second movement.

The Takacs Quartet, which returned to UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall on Sunday afternoon, has Janacek’s moves down pat. They went at several solo passages with deliberate, almost-but-not-quite-reckless roughness--particularly the wild second violinist (and founding member) Karoly Schranz--attacking the tremolos with fizzing power, observing the strange accelerandos in the second movement to the max. Like many groups, even Czech ones, they couldn’t find the lilt in the folk rhythms, but that was the only flaw in an otherwise blazing, multifaceted performance.

Elsewhere, the Takacs displayed absolutely unanimous, robust classicism in the Beethoven Quartet in F, Op. 18, No. 1--polished yet with an edge--and rambunctiously exploited the extreme tempo contrasts within the movements of Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A, Op. 81, with Andreas Haefliger’s elegant if occasionally indistinct piano on board. In Dvorak as in Janacek, they knew precisely how far they could stretch the fabric without ripping apart the costume.