Now that the university’s new academic year is in full swing, UC San Diego’s ArtPower launched its fall music season Friday (Oct. 21) with a concert by the Hugo Wolf Quartett. Introducing the ensemble to the Prebys Concert Hall audience, ArtPower Artistic Director Martin Wollesen enthused that after their ArtPower concert three years ago, he simply had to invite them to return.

I spent much of the evening wondering why.

I confess that I missed this string quartet on their previous visit to UCSD, but I was mildly intrigued by their offering on this concert the rarely played “String Quartet in D Minor” by the group’s namesake. A long, episodic work from Wolf’s anguished youth, what this music lacks in structural finesse and logical development—virtues that conservative chamber music audiences typically applaud—it compensates with ample flair and impetuous diversions, not to mention nods to Wagnerian harmonic progressions.

After giving the Hugo Wolf Quartett kudos for selecting Wolf’s “String Quartet in D Minor” and saluting their ardent, persuasive account of the same, there is little left to praise, save for their stellar cellist Florian Berner. From the first phrases of the program-opening Franz Schubert “C Minor String Quartet” (usually called the “Quartettsatz” because it is but a single movement), Berner’s unflagging artistry and personality dominated this ensemble.

His dominance was not, however, a product of overplaying or failure to collaborate with the other strings. If the old adage of the string quartet as an “intelligent conversation among equals” is true, then I would say that Berner simply had more compelling and trenchant comments to make that did his colleagues. His rounded, generous timbre, his inventive phrasing, and the buoyant quality of his line overshadowed boith violins and the viola.

The violinists, Sebastian Gürtler and Régis Bringolf, projected an unusually slender timbre that gave the ensemble an edgy quality that was not at all mitigated by violist Gertrud Weinmeister’s gruff, throaty timbre. In the more athletic variations of the second movement of Robert Schumann’s “String Quartet No. 2 in F Major,” for example, the violins’ fortissimos grated uncomfortably, a similar problem in Schubert’s roiling figuration in the “Quartettsatz.”

Schumann’s Scherzo may indeed be “a real tour de force for the first violin” as the astute program annotator Eric Bromberger observed, but Berner’s jaunty, confident cello ideas held my attention throughout the movement, as he did in parallel manner in the Allegro molto, Schumann’s zestful concluding movement. Some first violinists err by domineering, but Gürtler was far too self-effacing for the tasks the composers gave him.

I don’t think I am in the minority when I cast my lot for a string quartet that has a balanced, well-integrated sound, characteristics exhibited by most North American quartets, from the long-established Emerson String Quartet and Orion String Quartet to the youthful Calder Quartet. Not only should the players’ timbres match, but their interpretive approaches need to balance. Listening to the Hugo Wolf Quartett, I heard one exuberant extrovert and three modest introverts. So next time, I suggest that ArtPower invite Berner to give a cello recital when the ensemble is touring in Southern California, and let the other three players visit Magic Mountain.

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