MUSIC REVIEW
Quartet achieves harmonious blend

By Ruth Bingham
Special to The Advertiser

In the world of produce, there are plums, there are apricots, and then there are plucots, a cross between the two. In music, there is Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or Mendelssohn, and occasionally pieces that are curious combinations of their styles.

The three pieces segued rather nicely through a spectrum of possibilities.

In the Prelude and Fugue, Mozart consciously imitated Bach's style, with extensive passages being essentially a resetting of the original. The result was a piece as wholly unlike Bach as it was unlike Mozart.

The music raised unsettling questions without answers: Is this what either might have sounded like if he had been born during the other's era? What is the exact balance between individuals creating the current style and style shaping individual composers? Would they have achieved the same level of mastery, no matter when they were born? Or was their mastery a serendipitous combination of talent, individual inclinations, and prevailing style?

Prelude and Fugue was performed by three members of the Galliard Quartet: Claire Sakai Hazzard, violin; Mark Butin, viola; and Karen Bechtel, cello. The trio navigated deftly through movements that were surprisingly somber and old-fashionedly learned for Mozart, leaving the audience to wonder if that was Mozart's opinion of Bach's style.

Mozart's K.464, one of his "Haydn" quartets, revealed a much more integrated mix. The style is unequivocally Mozart's, but it is a Mozart who had studied, struggled, and finally learned the techniques that made Haydn quartets so extraordinary: four equal voices, contrapuntal accompaniments, witty and elegant.

The Galliard Quartet, now complete with the addition of second violin Hung Wu, seemed more comfortable with this Mozart — as, indeed, Mozart sounded more comfortable with his own writing.

Ensemble and dynamic nuance were strong, and the musicians shone individually in their featured variations: Hazzard's arias sang, Wu answered smoothly, Butin interjected with character, and Bechtel's snappy ostinato led the group on a merry march.

The Galliard Quartet closed with Mendelssohn's Quartet in A Minor, Opus 13, a work inspired by Beethoven and a work that imitates trademarks of Beethoven's final quartet, Opus 135. But the style remains unmistakably Mendelssohn's. In fact, the best parts, such as the sprightly third movement, are purest Mendelssohn and serve up a moral: We are at our best not when imitating but when wholly ourselves.

Mendelssohn's burgeoning Romanticism, with its expressive warmth, suited the Galliard Quartet well. Their playing, both individually and as a group, was more intuitive, the passion in the music seeming to evoke a corresponding passion in the musicians. Their return to adagio at the end of the second movement was lovely, the whole of the third movement created a high point, and their carefully balanced forte brought the evening to a very satisfying close.