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Chamber ensemble precise, full of insight

By William Furtwangler

Chamber Music Charleston played with blinding precision and vivid musical insight Tuesday in the second of three summer concerts presented by The Old Exchange Building.

Opening with Sergei Prokofiev's Second String Quartet from 1941, Alan Molina and Megan Allison, violins, Gretchen Fraizer, viola and Timothy O'Malley, cello, showed remarkable skill in re-creating this masterpiece.

Prokofiev used folk-music from the Kabardino-Balkar region in the northern Caucasus where the oriental influence is evident.

Prokofiev's coruscating and astringent music, and his ample use of motoric rhythms, was a challenge the performers, all local professional musicians, met in a performance second to none.

Perhaps more demanding was Ludwig van Beethoven's Quartet, Op. 59, No. 2, one of the three "Rasumovsky" quartets the players delivered with proper classical aplomb.

This quartet quotes a Russian folk song in the trio of the scherzo and was played in the grand manner. It is not nearly as "mad" as the Viennese audiences thought Beethoven was in 1806 but rather a portal to the future.