Pacifica Quartet at University of Chicago February 24, 2003 BY WYNNE DELACOMA Classical Music Critic For all the talk about our era's vaunted lack of attention span, classical musicians and audiences are irresistibly drawn to playing and hearing every last scrap of a particular corner of a composer's repertoire. A few season's back, Yo-Yo Ma offered a true marathon, performing all six of Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello over the course of a single day's matinee and evening performances in Symphony Center. The Vermeer Quartet is wrapping up a two-year excursion through Beethoven's chamber music for strings. Pianists want to perform the five Beethoven piano concertos in a unified cycle, and string quartets regularly devote themselves to all of Beethoven string quartets, or Bartok's six or Shostakovich's 15 over a concentrated span of time. As marathons go, the young, Chicago-based Pacifica Quartet must claim some sort of prize. Friday night at the University of Chicago's Mandel Hall they tackled some of the most daunting music in the repertoire, Elliott Carter's five string quartets. Composed between 1951 and 1995, these are densely packed, knotty works whose intriguing but tangled strands require not only superior technical resources but also fearsome powers of concentration. The Pacifica--founded in 1994, its members' ages hovering between late 20s and early 30s--tossed off the demanding music of the 94-year-old composer with precision, elan and, most notably, good cheer. After the first quartet, which runs approximately 40 minutes, Carter's string quartets become more concise, with running times closer to 25 minutes. The first quartet is more rhapsodic than the others, with a relatively lyrical, spacious sweep to its four movements. But the elements that would become more distilled in the later quartets--Carter's emphasis on hypersensitive interplay among players, whether in intimate conversation or stormy conflict, his sharply carved rhythms and tiny, melodic fragments that instantly seized our attention only to vanish just as quickly--were all present in that earliest quartet. Even with two short intermissions, this was a challenging evening for the audience. For all their beauties of sound and periodic humor, Carter's quartets need to be absorbed and mulled over, a difficult task when they keep coming one after another. But the Pacifica, a winner of the prestigious Naumburg prize and in residence at both University of Chicago and Northwestern University, played each quartet as if completely besotted by every unexpected twist in Carter's highly charged musical universe. They have done this cycle in New York, and Friday's performance had the feeling of confident musicians playing at the top of their considerable game. First violinist Simin Ganatra was a galvanizing force throughout the long evening. Even more impressive than her technical command and unflagging energy, was the elegance and delicacy she brought to Carter's periodic, instantaneous shifts from a power-driven, ferocious line to spatters of high, airy whispered notes. Violist Masumi Per Rostand's playing was seductively assertive, especially in the Second Quartet's viola cadenza, while Sibbi Bernhardsson, second violin, matched Ganatra's flexible line and copious energy. Brandon Vamos' cello was an indispensable presence, whether growling amid near silence in the Fifth Quartet or setting up a brisk, pacing undercurrent in the First Quartet's opening movement.