Boston Classical Review

The Jerusalem Quartet performed music of Haydn, Shostakovich and Dvořák Friday night for the Celebrity Series of Boston. Photo: Felix Broede

In music as in love, passion can be a double-edged sword.

Take the Jerusalem Quartet’s performance at Jordan Hall on Friday night. Nobody’s about to argue that the ensemble’s Celebrity Series-presented traversal of works by Franz Josef Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Antonín Dvořák– plus encores by Haydn and Felix Mendelssohn – weren’t fervent.

Yet too often that intensity came at the cost of tonal purity and intonation.

The climax of the first-movement development in Dvořák’s Op. 106 Quartet, for instance, was queasily unsettled. So was some of the leaping, stratospheric noodling in Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 12. Likewise, certain of the culminating moments in the slow movement of Haydn’s B-flat-major “Prussian” Quartet sounded uncomfortably gritty.

Still, despite the night’s sometimes edgy production, the ensemble’s command of their repertoire’s spirit and character felt, on the whole, unfailingly correct. Their take on the Haydn, for example, was enchantingly organic and unpredictable.

Thanks to some ill-timed extraneous noises from the house, the pulsing figure that opens the first movement almost sounded like an erroneous entrance. Yet, paradoxically, the Allegro’s larger structure emerged out of that haphazard beginning as a conversation already underway, each statement of its turning main theme and scampering triplet runs building, rhetorically, on the last.

There was no shortage of wit on display in the Menuetto, especially during the violins’ volleying octaves near the end of its Trio. Neither did the Jerusalems withhold on shapeliness during the contrapuntal textures in the effervescent finale: the moments of ingratiating surprise, like the first violin’s mid-movement cadenza, were thoroughly charming.

Unexpectedly, the night’s Shostakovich interpretation had more than a few things in common with the Haydn. It was, for one, resoundingly lyrical. What’s more, the group illuminated the score’s structure with a comparable sense of freedom.

Granted, Shostakovich’s writing in this effort isn’t inhibited by Classical protocols. Completed in 1968, the Twelfth Quartet is as notable for its fusion of twelve-tone rows with tonality (it ends, rather insistently, in D-flat major) as it is for its two-movement form.

Friday’s rendition used the recurring statements of the row as, essentially, anchors around which the music’s other activities orbited. There are many of those—lilting, dance-like figures; pathos-laden, searching melodies; snapping rhythmic mottos—and their relationships to one another aren’t always obvious.

Nevertheless, the Jerusalems’ account found unity in the various solos passed around the ensemble. Cellist Kyril Zlotnikov’s ardent take on his second-movement part, with its elisions into the eerie strains of a chorale, was particularly striking.

Similarly impressive was the collective’s overarching presentation of Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 13. Completed after the composer’s return to Prague from New York in 1895, this is music that showcases Dvořák at his warm-hearted, expansive best.

In Friday’s performance, the music’s peaks were suitably big, especially in the first two movements; the Adagio was conspicuously incisive. While the Molto vivace’s outer thirds spoke with borderline aggression, its central Trio offered a warm respite. So did the flowing triplet figurations in the finale’s slow interlude.

Afterwards, the Quartet rewarded Friday’s enthusiastic, if bronchial audience with two encores: the Adagio from Haydn’s F-minor String Quartet Op. 20 no. 5 and the “Canzonetta” from Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1. They hit their stride in the latter and passion and precision were finally in perfect alignment.

The Celebrity Series presents the Castalian String Quartet playing music by Schubert, Kurtág, Coleridge-Taylor, and Beethoven 7:30 p.m. November 14 at Pickman Hall. celebrityseries.org