A Duet of Poetry and Strings at Royce Hall

Suddenly UCLA has become a haven for world-class string quartets trying to break out of their usual concert rituals. Following the Emerson Quartet’s riveting theatrical “The Noise of Time” two weeks ago, the Takacs Quartet collaborated with former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky at Royce Hall Saturday night in a program titled “All the World for Love.” Sounds like a trend.

Indeed, the two events had one striking thing in common: Both were preoccupied with 20th century composers’ last thoughts--the Emerson with Shostakovich, the Takacs with Janacek and Britten. Yet the Takacs’ step away from routine was less radical; Pinsky would read four or five works from a mostly glittering gallery of poets--Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, to name a few--and the Takacs would play a complete work on its own.

The links between music and poetry could have been far tighter without changing so much as a note or word. There were no texts of the poems in the printed program, and intelligibility within Royce’s live acoustics was a sometime thing, so listeners mainly had only the carefully formed sounds of Pinsky’s syllables to grapple with. There was not a word in the program about the music--and here there was a lot to be said about the autobiographical content of Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2 and Britten’s String Quartet No. 3 that would have provided added resonance. (Ben Jonson’s “His Excuse for Loving,” for one, had direct relevance to Janacek’s love for a much younger woman, which inspired his quartet.)

Nevertheless, this format coaxed heated, gutsy, eloquent performances from the Takacs, which nailed the obsessiveness of Janacek, played Barber’s famous Adagio with quietly throbbing emotion, and captured the disturbed, decayed, enigmatic qualities of late-period Britten. Essentially, the performers trusted their listeners to get it--and judging from the Q&A; period afterward, some did.