On the sixth day of Beethoven

the Muir-ites gave to me:The fourth of the quartets,

The last of the late ones,

And a dynamite "Razumovsky."

Thus, in the words of first-violinist Peter Zazofsky, the members of the Muir String Quartet came "to the end of our journey" Saturday at the Museum of Fine Arts - namely, the final installment in a six-concert survey of the 16 Beethoven quartets, plus the "Grosse Fuge" (the original finale of the Op. 130 Quartet), co-sponsored by the Snowbird Institute and the University of Utah.

That's a lot of Beethoven, even spread over two weeks with a four-month break. But if anything, the audience's appetite seemed keener at the end than it had at the beginning.

For one thing, there were more people there Saturday than at any of the previous installments. And that extended to the pre-concert lecture - in this case an impassioned testament by retired U. music professor Ardean Watts - for which the crowd was standing-room-only.

As might be expected, there was also some standing at the end of the Muir's part of the program, especially since they concluded not with the last of the quartets, the autumnal Op. 135, but the second of the Op. 59 "Razumovsky" Quartets, produced for the count of that name who was the Russian ambassador to Vienna.

In deference to the count's origins, Beethoven included a "Theme russe" in this score, as he had the Op. 59, No. 1. Here it was the "Slava" melody, later used in Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov," which Beethoven weaves into a delightful contrapuntal trio midway through the third-movement Allegretto.

Saturday, however, that delight was embedded in a performance that played up the mounting tension of the first two movements before giving way to a semi-playful, almost dreamlike view of the third.

In each the Muir's playing was marked by beauty and tensile strength, the reprises in the scherzo communicating a special poignancy. After which came the rhythmic exhilaration of the Finale, culminating in a slashing Piu presto.

Before this came the Op. 18, No. 4 - in some ways the most experimental of the early quartets - and the Op. 135, in which the aging composer seems to cast a final glance back.

Here the first insinuated itself on one's consciousness from the first, balancing virility with Viennese charm. Even the minuet had about it an underlying urgency and, with second-violinist Bayla Keyes singing the main line, a quiveringly expectant trio.

No less involving was the Op. 135 - like the very first of the Op. 18 quartets, in F major - in a performance that had strength, poignancy and reflection.

Witness the mature merriment of the galloping second movement, its every beat and offbeat in place, and the tranquility of the third, here wonderfully sustained in mood and texture. Indeed, the climaxes pulled on the heart in a way that foreshadowed the finale, whose dancing gait embraced both the stern humor of Beethoven's repeated invocations of "Es muss sein!" ("It must be!") and the affecting pizzicati before the end.

This was preceded Friday by a similarly comprehending account of the Op. 130 Quartet - here with the more "practical" finale Beethoven's publisher suggested - and perhaps the finest performance of the Op. 18, No. 5, Quartet I have ever heard.

In the latter Beethovenian exuberance was combined with Mozartean grace (the K. 464 Quartet was in fact his model) in an account in which everything registered, from the resilient spring of the opening to the mercurial dash of the finale.

In between came a lightly-eased-into minuet (with some idiomatic hesitations) and a marvelously varied Andante, its semi-wistful statement of the theme setting up the affectionate characterization of the variations that follow.

In the Muir's hands the Op. 130 also had a certain divertimento quality, at least after the hair-trigger emotional shifts of the first movement.

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Throughout these concerts I have been impressed anew by the extent to which the Muir plays to each other - witness the closely grouped chairs and tight dovetailing of solos. At the same time, though, they do draw the audience in, and that was just as true of the ultralight Presto, the rustic but somehow darker Andante, the half-remembered "German dance" and the softly lit but gradually deepening Cavatina.

After this, a pregnant pause half led me to expect the "Grosse Fuge." Instead, we got the second finale, more upbeat perhaps but still in tune with what had gone before, with much going on below the surface.

But, then, that's true of all great music. And all great performances.

Bravo!

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