Music Reviews : Montclaire Quartet Plays for Valley Guild

The Music Guild’s valuable, increasingly well-attended new series of concerts in the San Fernando Valley hit a bump on Tuesday in the form of the Montclaire String Quartet, a young ensemble with residencies in Virginia, New Hampshire and at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

On the evidence of its presentation in the welcoming acoustic of the Pierce College Performing Arts Auditorium, the group--violinists Julie Fox Henson and Kathryn Hudson, violist Christine Vlajk, cellist Andrea Reynolds--would seem insufficiently prepared for the major exposure implied by participation in such a series.

The evening was marked by conjoined, persistent problems: insecure intonation, chiefly on the part of the first violinist, and a weak ensemble attack.

Shortcomings were evident at the outset, in an ill-tuned, unblended, rhythmically slack opening to the D-major Quartet from Haydn’s Opus 20. There were signs of life from the players in the bright, skipping minuet. But the scherzo-finale was both chaotic and underpowered.

Matters did not improve with Shostakovich’s wicked Ninth Quartet, whose acid jests are reduced to monotonous kvetching in a reading as unincisive as the one heard on Tuesday.

Finally, in what under other circumstances might have proven inspired programming (as a contrast to the Shostakovich), Mendelssohn’s sweet-tempered Quintet in B flat was alternately abused and anesthetized, with assisting artist Brian Dembow, violist of the Angeles Quartet, a blameless, misplaced witness to the proceedings.