Juilliard String Quartet at Symphony Center: It is hardly news when a group as distinguished as the Juilliard String Quartet plays a fine concert, yet it always seems new.
Sunday’s concert, the first of two at the Symphony Center, sandwiched a quartet by Alban Berg between two by Beethoven. Violinists Joel Smirnoff and Ronald Copes, violist Samuel Rhodes and cellist Joel Krosnick played with razor-edge precision and singleminded sensitivity.
The hall is not kind to the violin’s upper register; in the opening movement of Beethoven’s D Major Quartet, Op. 18 No. 3, Smirnoff’s high-wire acrobatics sounded bleached and thin. But the Andante had a warm, afternoon glow, and the Presto was as quick and darting as a school of minnows.
The Berg quartet, dating from 1910, is a dense interplay of sound that combines atonality with a lush, late-romantic feel. It was splendidly played.
In the Beethoven “Razumovsky” Quartet No. 3, the dark, burnished sound of Rhodes’ viola summed up the somber Andante. The final Allegro molto was taken at a speed that seemed downright foolhardy, but it stayed crisp and accurate throughout. The Juilliard performs again Wednesday.
