The Jerusalem Quartet’s performance at Gates Concert Hall Monday night was tough to call. The all-male ensemble of 20-somethings – violinists Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler, violist Amihai Grosz and cellist Kyril Zlotnikov – were often brilliant in their synchronized intensity and spot-on interpretation. But there were also inarticulate musical moments that lacked cohesion and creativity.
In Joseph Haydn’s “Sunrise” string quartet, for example, the dreamy, translucent opening was compromised by Pavlovsky’s lack of interpretive imagination.
His brisk pace and insistently forceful dynamics, while sometimes appropriate, hardly varied.
It wasn’t until the third movement that the quartet showed glimpses of musical restraint that added a layer of color, context and depth. Overcoming a few off-key moments and labored ornamentations, the menuetto danced in contrast to the contemplative adagio movement.
The coda was an elated sprint to the finish line that drove home the quartet’s youthful “more is better” personality.
In Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 4, however, the talented group – which, despite its musical adolescence, has performed worldwide for a decade – demonstrated a more mature musical sensibility that evocatively recalled the folk music of Russian Jews.
The opening prelude progressed into a desolate, mournful andantino that projected Zlotnikov’s exquisitely impassioned playing.
The group’s enchanting swells and swoops in Antonin Dvorák’s “American” string quartet closed the program on a high note. Grosz carefully shaped the undulating passages of the opening theme within a rhythmically syncopated framework for an overall free-form effect.
Pavlovsky and Bresler proved themselves competent collaborators in an emotional, haunting reading of the soaring melodic lines in the lento movement. The melody passed from violin to cello and ultimately among all four voices, only to land again in Zlotnikov’s able hands, the other instruments playing pizzicato.
In Pavlovsky’s delightfully buoyant rendition of a scarlet tanager’s song, he relinquished his earlier attempts to command the music, and allowed himself and his musical partners to be carried and transformed by it. Presented with a generous measure of good cheer, the energetic scherzo and finale brought the audience to its feet.
In a mindful commemoration of the Holocaust, the quartet added a poignant and plaintive Israeli tune as an encore. Originally set to Hannah Szenes’ poem “Eli, Eli,” the prayerful work was delivered with fervent dedication.
