Music Review : Prague Quartet Opens Guild Season

The distinguished, veteran Prague String Quartet provided a dispirited, dispiriting opening on Wednesday to the new season of Music Guild concerts in the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.

Gleaming, robust ensemble tone and outdoorsy vitality rather than interpretive subtlety have always characterized the Czech ensemble’s work. On this occasion, however, mechanical shortcomings were so obtrusive as to make interpretive considerations irrelevant.

Accurate intonation proved painfully elusive throughout the evening for first violinist Bretislav Novotny, inconsistent in many of cellist Jan Sirc’s most exposed passages. The sum of the two players’ problems was sufficient to be fatal to quartets by Haydn (in C, Opus 54, No. 2), Beethoven (in C minor, Opus 18, No. 4) and Dvorak (the Prague’s signature piece, the “American” Quartet).

The notes proved less of an obstacle for second violinist Karel Pribyl--a founder, with Novotny, of the ensemble in 1955. Pribyl’s transgressions had more to do with consistently edgy tone and, in Beethoven, excessive volume, his part tending to swamp Novotny’s.

Amid the general chaos--most notably in Dvorak--the lush, secure viola of Lubomir Maly stood out in alarming relief: an unwitting reproach to its errant fellows.