Carnegie Music Hall provided the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society's audience a warm respite from Monday night's cold temperatures. The Wihan Quartet's balanced tone provided musical warmth with intriguing performances of works by Beethoven and their fellow Czech composers Smetana and Dvorak. Formed in 1985 and still comprised of the original members, the Wihan Quartet established a convincing balance between the intimate and grand expressions inherent to each work.

Ales Kasprik (cello) and Jiri Zigmund (viola) provided a strong sonic foundation for violinists Leos Cepicky and Jan Schulmeister. Zigmund's approach to the viola's role within the quartet provided a nice counter balance to Cepicky's leading violin. Especially in the third movement of Smetana's Second Quartet, Zigmund's entrances -- like the voice in the back of one's mind -- interrupted the calmness of the movement's close.

The Wihan's interpretation of Smetana's work as a whole was direct and evocative. They brought a declamatory, speech-like quality to the second movement and a fluidity of line to the first. Their exuberance in the finale was marked by the tightness of the ensemble gestures.

To Beethoven's "Serioso" Quartet, the ensemble brought a strong understanding of the role that harmonic dissonance plays in the work's phrase structure. The result was a structurally sound reading, marked by crisp rhythms and matching articulations among the instruments.

The highlight of the night was the performance of Dvorak's Thirteenth Quartet. Written after the composer returned to his homeland following a brief appointment in New York, this is a harmonically robust work that portrays both nostalgia and cheer. The quartet made the transitions of musical thought and chromatic harmony seamless in the expansive first movement. Cepicky's tone introducing the second movement's main tune was suggestive of a fiddle, bringing it a resonating folk-music quality. Applaudable throughout the night, Kasprik's never overbearing timbre and fast, narrow vibrato were especially highlighted in this slow movement. The nebulous and searching quality of the finale was enhanced by the Wihan's ability to maintain a clear articulation of the structurally important moments.

For their encore, the ensemble played the final movement of Dvorak's "American" quartet. Encores are often performed as a concert's desert and are sometimes accompanied by a diminishment in performance (and audience) concentration. Through the Wihan's interpretation, though, I was able to see this familiar movement in a new light. Because it was juxtaposed against Dvorak's Thirteenth Quartet, the movement's American qualities were made even more obvious, while the juxtaposition also revealed what is not American to the movement. The players portrayed the work's lyric material as music of memory and absence, making Dvorak's longing for his homeland clearly audible.