Harlem Quartet displays its breadth with a program of Schumann and contemporary Cuban works

The Harlem Quartet, with an assertive mission of expanding string-quartet repertoire and audiences, gave a bright, energetic sample of its work Wednesday night in a program divided between a romantic masterpiece and a group of new works by a guest pianist, brother of its first violinist.

Aldo Lopez-Gavilan writes music of florid surfaces and emotional depths. The five pieces that he and his string-quartet colleagues played after intermission at the Ensemble Music Society concert fill wide canvases with color and rhythm. Often they elaborate on repeated figures, resembling jazz improvisation over a hypnotic riff. The pulsating energy of dance music is never far from the surface.

Harlem Quartet with pianist Aldo Lopez-Gavilan (second from left)

Lopez-Gavilan's music often makes pictorial points, suggesting scoring for movies running only in the composer's mind. Such was the impression given by the first of the set that the ensemble offered a near-capacity audience at the Glick Indiana History Center. That was a musical cityscape of London, England, in its contemporary reality of ethnic diversity. Becoming familiar with the city's 21st-century neighborhoods, the  quartet began a multi-year residency in the British capital in 2018.

The pianist often provided himself with vigorous solo excursions, thickly harmonized and comprising lots of filigree of almost architectural heft and detail. That reached its apogee in the capricious finale "Pan con Timba" (translated for his hometown audience by cellist Felix Umansky, with the composer's help, as "Bread With Who-Knows?") 

Lopez-Gavilan's  thoughts as a composer go from the intimately personal, as in the fraternal tribute "Eclipse" (featuring first violinist Ilmar Gavilan) to the cosmic, as in the intricate space-travel conversation he sets up in "Talking to the Universe."  In "Aegean Dreams," the composer establishes a reflective scenario with a long initial passage in string harmonics, rippling piano underneath, that yields to a wistful viola melody, tenderly played Wednesday by Jaime Amador. 

For an encore, the group offered an interpretation of a piece it is justified in staking claim to: Duke Ellington's "Take the 'A' Train," which is how you get to Harlem, as the lyric says. The performance featured improvised solos that generated responsive applause from the audience in the jazz manner.

The five musicians established their bona fides in the program's first half, consisting of Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-flat major, op. 44. With second violinist Melissa White, the ensemble worked smoothly together, with slightly too much individuality of tone in some places. But the unanimity of effect was obvious throughout, led  by the sparkle and drive of Lopez-Gavilan's piano, no more so than in the Scherzo (third movement).  

Especially noteworthy was the group's ability to contrast the work's different thematic areas, with slight tempo adjustments: the doleful march profile of the second movement was neatly backed away from in the second theme without impairing the music's integrity. 

The ensemble regularly imbued transitional passages with suspense as the momentum built, particularly in the first and final movements. It amounted to a fresh, exciting interpretation of familiar music that suggested how adventurous the Harlem Quartet is comfortable being.