Musicians show verve with Brahms quartets

When you hear a group like the New England Piano Quartette, you get a vibrant sampling of chamber music the way it was intended to be played: never overbearing and without the tiniest hint of imprecision. Known for presenting unusual programs with style and authority, the Quartette upheld its tradition by performing Brahms piano quartets yesterday evening at the Maine Center for the Arts. The group, which played to a smallish audience, displayed expressive power and virtuosic elegance without sacrificing any warmth or spontaneity.

Based mostly in Maine, the Quartette is generally made up of pianist Frank Glazer, violinist Werner Torkanowsky, cellist George Sopkin, and violist Scott Woolweaver. Each musician has a distinguished reputation as soloist and chamber music player nationally and internationally, and the three former make their homes in Maine.

For Sunday’s concert, however, Torkanowsky was unable to perform due to illness, so Millard Taylor, of the Eastman School of Music, filled in and proved himself a commanding and skillful musician.

Working tightly as a group, the musicians took hold of the hefty program of quartets, which moved from weighty openings, to loosely connected inner movements, and ended with monumental fanfares.

Beginning with the dark Quartet in A Major, the musicians mastered the taut form and studiously presented the nuances of tenderness, chaos, and ecstasy. From the swaying sounds of Hungarian folk dances, to the soaring waves of pastoral pleasantry and tormented emotions, the Quartette showed excellent detail work and characteristic dignity.

Glazer’s foreboding ripples on the piano combined smoothly with the romantic seriousness of the other string parts for an ominous effect in the second movement. Alacrity took over for a richly textured clarity in the final section, which had all the depth of a fuller orchestra.

Though never too dominant on piano, Glazer was particularly eloquent with Sopkin in the opening measures of the third movement in Quartet in c minor. The depth and feeling only continued when Woolweaver and Taylor joined in. This serious quartet, known to be autobiographical, was the shining performance of the evening. The group swiftly handled the trotting rhythms, jazzy string demands, and full-bodied passion of the themes.

A superbly multilayered reading of the Quartet in g minor ended the program in grand fashion. The blend of strings was breathtaking at times, and the liveliness took on the robustness of a gypsy ballyhoo or a marching band. In this tour de force, the fanciful phrasing switched back and forth between a cartoonish hilarity and exhilarating sonority. The counterpoint brought a looseness to the evening that had been stirring below the surface of earlier pieces, but couldn’t explode until this delightful finale. It was as if the fiery, racey themes of this vigorous piece gave these first-class musicians the opportunity to take flight.