DIARIO LEVANTE Valencia, Spain Destined to be famous April 27, 2004 By Alfredo Brotons Muñoz Works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Dvorak. Music Palace of Valencia, April 24. The International Soloist and Chamber Music Series at the Palace’s Rodrigo Hall has achieved another success with the visit of a string quartet about which we will all be talking in a few years, when the public becomes aware of their fame for astonishing those who are lucky enough to hear them. Its members are very young, some of them perhaps barely thirty years old. However, the individual quality of each member is first class, and in the ten years since its formation as a group at the Pacific seashore of the United States, they have achieved a cohesion that in years past was only achieved by silvery-haired players. The program included three pieces that are not among the most well-known of their respective composers, arranged in perfect order to illustrate the important evolution of romanticism. Perhaps we were missing interpreters such as these, capable of understanding the distinctive inspiration of each work. Contradicting its deceptive subtitle, Beethoven’s "Harp", Opus 74, was presented in the nakedness of its stern, even misanthropic vigor. Not less characteristic and, by contrast, beautiful were unbelievable levels achieved by first violinist Simin Ganatra at the end of the first movement, in the D-flat major passage during the second movement, and in the fifth variation of the Allegretto con variazione. The unsettled brilliance of Beethoven’s Scherzo in Opus 74 became immediately present in the Allegro vivace of Mendelssohn's Opus 44, No. I. In the repeated exposition the Pacifica maintained a firm tension by the drive of the various false reprises of the development. Rather than combatting the subdued character of the two central movements by exaggerating some differences which are evident by merely reading the score, success was achieved with a steady dynamic level and in the Minuet by softening the sforzandi and by Ganatra again taking risks with the sound leveling and the rubatos delivered in the Trio. In the Presto con brio, moderating the underlining textual references to the Italian Symphony proved very good judgment. The group was joined by its friend James Dunham in Dvorak’s Quintet, Opus 97, converted into a country fiesta interrupted only for a moment by Brandon Vamos’ cello with a sorrowful cry in the fourth variation of the Larghetto, and the evening concluded in an atmosphere of utmost admiring emotion.