The Miro Quartet has been a leader for its generation of quartets, dating back to its salad days in the mid-'90s. Monday night at Carnegie Music Hall, the young group also showed it can brilliantly handle an accompanying role.

	Eliot Fisk joined the Miro Quartet for the concert that opened the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society's season at Carnegie Music Hall. Click photo for larger image.

In fact, the four musicians even showed they can portray decent mules.

That is, they portrayed a pack of unruly burros in one movement of Leonardo Balada's new work, Caprichos No. 1, in a concert that opened the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society season with Spanish flair. In homage to Federico Garcia Lorca, Balada transformed seven of the poet's interpolated Andalusian folk songs into a colorful work for quartet and guitar, played by Eliot Fisk. In the first, "Los Cuatro Muleros," Fisk portrayed four mule drivers of varying technique, garnering the appropriate responses from the braying quartet: Pittsburgh native Joshua Gindele (who even plays a Pittsburgh cello, made by local master violinmaker Phillip Injeian), Daniel Ching and Sandy Yamamoto (violin) and John Largess (viola).

Later movements depicted chanting pilgrims, a displaced native's nostalgia for Spain, a lullaby for an abandoned baby and several dances. While the work found the Carnegie Mellon University composer again combining modern techniques with folk music, the entire piece was shrouded in surrealism, as if episodes of a dream. Other than some issues with harmonics, the Miro Quartet handled Balada's requests well and brought out the contrasting music powerfully. The work, which the group premiered during the summer in Austin, Texas, is one of Balada's most poetic and striking.

Thematic programs give a better focus to classical concerts (which often can be all over the board), and this one was no exception. By the time Balada's composition arrived, it was already heard in the context of a quartet by the "Spanish Mozart," Juan Crisostomo Arriaga (1806-26), and Spanish pianist and composer Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909). Fisk played the latter in transcription for the guitar, although the acclaimed performer was curiously off here. He had multiple tuning issues that seemed to distract him from fully expressing this music, as well as that of Paganini's 24th Caprice and a solo by Arriaga. His timbre and attack were monotonous, failing to capture the individuality of each of these vibrant pieces.

The Miro did just the opposite with Arriaga's Quartet No. 3. Although written in 1824, it is a facile composition that takes little consideration of the groundbreaking efforts in the genre to that point by Beethoven, Schubert and others. Its lines sing but just don't plumb much depth structurally. Yet the Miro raised the work to a much higher level, with exceptional phrasing, remarkable ensemble and detailed attention.

Dynamics, bow attack and timbre were put in the service of a large-scale conception of each movement. Energy in the first movement turned to sweetness in the pastoral second and genteel grace in the minuet and (much too short) trio. As it executed the finale with a razor-sharp precision, the Miro again showed why it is the toast of the chamber-music world. While I do appreciate its spreading out into non-core repertory -- in 2004, it played a Glass quartet here -- I hope the Miro will grant us a concert of the classics in the future. To hear them interpret Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart as they did Arriaga would be quite fine indeed.

The combined forces concluded the concert in rousing fashion with Boccherini's Quintet in D major for quartet and guitar, best known for its fandango finale.