Fine Arts Quartet and guest

Traditionally, bullfighters spend a few moments alone in prayer before entering the ring. Joaquin Turina‘s La Oracion del Torero would capture the spirit of those moments in music. The torero sounded a little distracted Sunday, in the Fine Arts Quartet‘s performance of this 1925 composition.

Violinists Ralph Evans and Efim Boico, violist Nicolo Eugelmi and cellist Wolfgang Laufer never found the groove in terms of pitch or ensemble. They conveyed the essence of the piece — the bravado of the dance-like opening theme, the defiance of the rhetorical second idea and the ardent devotion in the song-like third — but through a mildly annoying veil of inaccuracy. Hearing this performance was like watching an absorbing, well-acted movie that the projectionist never quite gets into focus.

That fuzziness persisted through Bruckner’s String Quartet in C minor. The Fine Arts at least lavished energy on Turina; the players sounded bored with Bruckner. If so, I don’t blame them; it’s not a very good piece. It came early in the composer’s output and sounds like him diligently imitating Beethoven, Mozart and perhaps Mendelssohn by way of completing his musical education.

The technical and aesthetic problems vanished when guest violist Guillermo Figueroa joined them in Bruckner’s Intermezzo. This is minor Bruckner, but mature and original, an ambling, amiable tour in waltz time. I didn’t know that Bruckner could be so charming and easy-going.

The five players had a lot more fun in Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No. 2, Opus 87.

In the substantial opening movement, Mendelssohn throws down a vigorous principal them and a gentler second one in bang-bang fashion. He then develops the daylights out of them, the first, especially, in an enormous development section and further in a coda that is tantamount to a second development. This is bounding, buoyant music, dense and bustling and surging. The Fine Arts and friend gave it due energy and understood its moods and architecture. They built the many climaxes to an overall peak, in roller-coaster fashion.

Their light touch and metric lilt in the Andante scherzando contrasted nicely with the intensity of the first movement. I liked the way the instruments called out to and answered one another through the sonic boil of the third movement, which began as a dirge but became ever more agitated. And I liked the panache Evans showed in the many virtuoso flourishes for first violin in Mendelssohn’s finale. It was a strong finish to a program that really needed a strong finish.

The Fine Arts Quartet is in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. This concert took place at the UWM Zelazo Center. It was the occasion of the announcement, by dean Wade Hobgood of the Peck School of the Arts, of the establishment of the new Excelencia en la Music Scholarship fund for ethnic minorities, especially Hispanic students.