Contemporary British composer Thomas Adès enjoys a popularity rare for his calling, especially when his demanding style does not lend itself to movie sound tracks or blockbuster musicals. Just last month Adès and his music were featured in a week of programs at Carnegie Hall, and this week’s mail brings the glossy brochure from the Los Angeles Philharmonic touting its Adès Festival next season.

Calder Quartet.

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The Southern California-based Calder Quartet can be counted among Adès’ avid proponents, and Calder’s stimulating program Friday (April 16) at UC San Diego’s Conrad Prebys Hall was centered around Adès early string quartet “Arcadiana,” Op. 12, a work the young but seasoned ensemble featured on its inaugural CD.

A seven-movement suite full of terse surprises and incomplete ecstasies, “Arcadiana” is an abstract contemplation on a mythical, idealized landscape and way of life. Such a topic is hardly a typical rumination for a 23-year-old (Adès’ age when he composed “Arcadiana”) still eagerly exploring the actual landscape of adulthood, but one which clearly caught the composer’s fancy.

Calder has performed with Adès recently—his “Piano Quintet” with the composer at the piano—and coached “Arcadiana” with him during his 2008 residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, so the quartet’s take on “Arcadiana” is unquestionably authoritative. In spite of the intense concentration required to articulate the fragmentary sonic explosions that only occasionally allow delicate melodic forays,Calder displayed a serenity in performance that matches the work’s title.

In “Arcadiana,” Adès’ aesthetic embodies the severe textural economy of Anton Webern wedded to the melodic “indulgence” of Alban Berg: when I hear this music I think of Franz Kline’s bold black-and-white Abstract Expressionist paintings with a touch of Helen Frankenthaler's chromatic flare. Sharp, even violent chords are followed by poignant respites, and just as a melodic zephyr catches your imagination, the composer cuts it off with a quick, descending portamento.

So it came as no surprise that Calder treated Franz Schubert’s valedictory “String Quartet No. 15 in G Major” like an avant garde score, maximizing its own violent and unexpected contrasts—especially its unprepared modulations—and refusing to treat it like a Viennese Sachertorte oozing with sweet melodies. In both the rigorous opening movement and the more reflective Andante, I admired cellist Eric Byers’ adroit phrasing and sensitivity to ensemble balance as he essayed his numerous solos with bravura authority. The baritonal eloquence of his sound resonated warmly in the welcoming acoustic of Prebys Hall.

Violinists Andrew Bulbrook and Ben Jacobson are well-matched, although first violinist Bulbrook’s more muscular timbre served well Schubert’s crabbed ornamental flights in the spirited opening and closing

UCSD's Prebys Hall.

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movements. Violist Jonathan Moerschel’s bright, forward tone and assertive demeanor contrast starkly with the dutiful, bland contributions of too many string quartet violists.

Schubert’s G Major String Quartet displays that characteristic “heavenly length”—a replete 50 minutes—that Schubert fans apostrophize and Calder was able to make riveting. Although the audience pleaded for an encore, the quartet had served a large banquet with the Schubert, and took numerous curtain calls without supplying dessert.

Calder opened the program with Igor Stravinsky’s early (1914) “Three Pieces,” a terse, proto-minimalist quartet that rarely makes its way into the concert hall. The first movement sounds like a transcription of a bawdy peasant dance for hurdy-gurdy, and the third movement evokes the slow chant of the Russian church set to dense, dissonant harmonies that the composer soon abandoned for his brighter, cleaner neo-classical style. These “Three Pieces” show that Stravinsky had the makings for a hard-edged Expressionist like his Viennese contemporaries.

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