Three Men & a Girl

The Quartette Italiano is novel in several respects--first of all because it is made up of Italians, and it has been a generation or more since an Italian quartet has won the general verdict "great." It also breaks with custom by including a girl: pretty Second Violinist Elisa Pegreffi. More astonishing still to the audiences who packed their 34 concerts in U.S. and Canadian cities this fall, the four musicians play without scores.

Last week the Quartetto Italiano wound up a sensational first tour of the U.S. with a Manhattan recital that made some quartet history itself. Acknowledging their audience with businesslike bows, the four young (average age 29) musicians stroked into one of their countrymen's compositions for a starter. Unhampered by scores, they seemed to play Boccherini's Quartet in D., Op. 6 with an air of almost impudent informality, sometimes glancing boldly around the audience as they played. For those used to staidness from string quartets, the atmosphere had something of the wild freedom of coasting downhill on a bike, no hands.

The music, however, was magnificent--controlled and precise, full of charm and nuance, and as smoothly and sweetly toned as the famed strings of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Playing the Beethoven "Razou-mouvsky" Op. 59, No. 3 the same easy way, the young musicians displayed a virility and vigor that brought roars of "bravo" with the last note. Their glassy sonorities and petal-soft pianissimos in the final Debussy proved that they command just about every quality of quartet sound. The audience, aware that they were hearing what is probably the finest quartet of the day, refused to go home. The Italians finally responded to the insistent clamor for "More, more" with two encores--in itself a rarity with string quartets.

Though they sound as if they have been playing together all their lives, the Italiano was formed only after the war. First Violinist Paolo Borciani rounded up the others--Elisa, Violist Piero Farulli and Cellist Franco Rossi--on a promise of "some money and good food." After less than four months of practice they gave their first concert. They have had their hands full ever since.

As for playing 32 quartets from memory, Borciani says there is nothing to it. After all, he points out, conductors and virtuosos do it, why not a string quartet?

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