MUSIC

Tetzlaff Quartet

The German virtuoso Christian Tetzlaff, one of the greatest violinists before the public today, has been playing quartets with his cellist sister Tanja and two colleagues for 14 years now. Their busy schedules permit only limited periods of work and touring together, but they clearly relish the opportunity. The Tetzlaff Quartet's performance Friday at the Library of Congress was unquestionably one of the highlights of the fall season.

Their leader is no prima donna, but the precision and intensity of his playing put it in a class by itself; it would be almost impossible to assemble three other artists of such stature. It is still an excellent quartet, operating with unobtrusive ease. Ensemble is skintight, but the players do not do everything in lock step. Bowing styles are slightly different, reflecting the various personalities, but they produce a dazzling palette of sounds, roaring like a full symphony or whispering at near-inaudibility.

In a richly expressive Mozart D Minor Quartet, K. 421, the group conveyed a melancholy beyond words, sometimes darkening the sound to a deathlike stasis. The rare moments of optimism sounded remote, like distant memories. The subtle and utterly natural variations of tempo were particularly effective.

The highlight of the concert was a searing performance of Berg's "Lyric Suite," possibly the most beautiful 12-tone composition ever written. This unique marriage of technique, literature (a hidden setting of a Baudelaire poem), expressive feeling and fractal musical architecture is one of the most challenging works in the quartet repertoire, and very rarely performed. The Tetzlaff tore into it with a white-hot intensity, drawing out every anguished gesture, and revealing the vision of a genius.

In the concluding Sibelius quartet, the many unison passages exposed occasional imperfections, but the ensemble's fleet, unfussy reading made the piece sound both shorter and better than it really was. The scurrying finale came off as a Finnish hoedown.

-- Robert Battey

Alfredo De La Fe

Alfredo De La Fe was a child-prodigy classical violinist in Cuba who moved with his family in 1965 to the United States, where at age 11 he performed at Carnegie Hall and won a scholarship to the Juilliard School. Soon afterward, however, he left Juilliard to play Latin dance music professionally, and since then De La Fe has played with Eddie Palmieri, Tito Puente, Santana and Celia Cruz, and recorded numerous albums as a leader or sideman. This tropical-music veteran sometimes guests with local bands rather than bringing his own, and that is what he did Saturday night with Joe Falero & the D.C. Latin Jazz All-Stars at Bethesda's intimate Juste Lounge.

De La Fe waited until the third song, "La Negra Tomasa," to join the 10-piece combo. Juste Lounge does not have a stage, so the group positioned itself along a wall right in front of the salsa-dancing couples. Using his trademark electric violin that has six strings on a skeletal plastic frame, the dreadlocked De La Fe quickly made his presence felt, heading out among the dancers and passionately slashing at the strings with his bow. Keeping the interests of the rug-cutters in mind, De La Fe did not solo too long and was accompanied by the band's insistent clave beat via the timbales, congas, keyboard and bass. Although De La Fe has, rock-style, used a wah-wah petal, this evening he kept his technique within the bounds of the Afro-Caribbean tradition.

The performers closed with a frenetic version of the Cuban favorite "El Cuarto de Tula." Aided by 80-something guest percussionist Miguel Cruz, along with an audience member on vocals, the ensemble delivered classic salsa rhythms with punchy horns and chirpy flute joining De La Fe in carrying the tune.

-- Steve Kiviat