It’s always a pleasure to hear good music, well played.  The Jupiter String Quartet delighted the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music audience Saturday evening with an eclectic program that was both entertaining and musically rewarding — the kind of program that keeps us coming back for more.

For an ensemble named after a planet, Jupiter is amazingly down-to-earth.  The players addressed the audience from the stage, signed autographs at intermission and mingled with the crowd at the post-concert reception.  Yet beneath the relaxed exterior is a first-rate ensemble, equipped with all the necessary ingredients required of a professional string quartet: a unique sound (anchored by the big and rich tone of cellist Daniel McDonough), a strong and dependable first violinist (Nelson Lee) and a firm command of ensemble interplay that synchronizes all aspects of its playing.  

As if all this weren’t enough, the four players actually look as if they belong together — which, in a way, they do.  McDonough is the husband of the quartet’s second violinist, Meg Freivogel, who is the sister of violist Liz Freivogel.  Family notwithstanding, it’s obvious these musicians enjoy each other’s company — one can see it on their faces and hear it in the manner in which they interact with one another. 

Jupiter appears to relish the challenges of a stylistically diverse program.  The three works performed Saturday evening took the ensemble from Classicism to Romanticism to the 20th-Century, and in each case Jupiter proved it has sufficient command of style to bring the music to life.  

The players wasted little time capturing the young Beethoven’s playful spirit in the Quartet in B-flat Major, Op.18 no. 6 (1798-1800), with alert execution of the sharply defined dotted-rhythmic figures that permeate the vivacious opening movement (Allegro con brio) and tight interplay between the middle voices (second violin and viola) during the closing theme of the exposition.

The warmly expressive dialogue between first and second violins in the opening of the second movement (Adagio) set the stage for the snappy syncopations of the vivacious Scherzo that followed.  Here, the players danced through Beethoven’s maze of tricky rhythmic twists and turns as if they were playing jump rope.  Jupiter’s well-paced passing from the melancholic opening of the final movement to the jovial, dance-like Allegretto, along with the shapely rubatos the ensemble produced throughout this movement, placed the finishing touches on this enjoyable and fulfilling listening experience.

Prokofiev’s Quartet No.2 in F Major (1942) owes its heavily ethnocentric flavors to the indigenous cultures intersecting the northern Caucasus mountains, where — according to McDonough’s pre-performance talk — the Soviet government relocated its best and brightest artists ahead of Hitler’s advancing armies during the Second World War. 

Jupiter is clearly a champion of this demanding work, and it showed in its playing.  

The four players dug into the music fearlessly, with a tone that oftentimes bordered on raucous, in a relentless effort to recapture the raw, authentic folk melodies of the Caucasus region unsanitized by the listener’s Western sensibilities.  They put lots of muscle and brawn into the thickly seasoned ethnic flavors of the outer two movements, where Prokofiev to a large extent mirrors what Bartok had done with the Magyars decades earlier.  I especially enjoyed the middle (Adagio) movement’s Kabardian love song (Synilyaklik Zhir), a sweet and haunting solo perched high atop the cello’s upper register, which McDonough played with a silky smooth legato. 

Perhaps the most persuasive effort of the evening came after intermission with a superlative performance of Mendelssohn’s masterful Quartet in D Major, Op.44 no.1.

Jupiter found a smart balance between angst and warmth of expression in the weighty first movement and demonstrated alert ensemble execution, from the persistent dotted rhythms of the opening measures to the five-note motif that passed seamlessly from player to player.  

Although the Minuet movement may have been a bit too fast to remain faithful to the composer’s tempo indication (un poco allegretto), I reveled in Jupiter’s poignant delivery of the wistful third movement, an Andante espressivo gently sprinkled with pizzicatos, that brought a lump to my throat.   

Jupiter raised the roof in the effulgent finale (Presto con brio), spinning off sets of  dazzling sextuplet runs that all but lit the auditorium like bolts of lightening, sending the crowd to its feet in a prolonged, and well deserved, standing ovation. 

Details Box:

What: Jupiter String Quartet

Where: Lincoln Middle School, 1613 James Street, Syracuse

When: November 12, 2011

Information: call (315) 446-3424

Ticket prices: Regular $20, Senior $15, Student $10

Website: http://syracusefriendsofchambermusic.org

Next: Jasper String Quartet, 8 p.m. February 25, 2012