Jupiter and Jasper quartets at the Perelman

One explanation for this musical anomaly is the parental support that musicians receive. Someone has to pay for all those childhood music lessons and instruments. By contrast, when I began inflicting my teenage prose on fiction editors, my only requirements were a typewriter and the modest sums the government then charged for postage stamps. Nowadays you need a computer, but still: Most bright contemporary children acquire a keyboard with their pacifier, and you can submit electronically without paying any postage cost at all.

The Jupiter and Jasper string quartets are a prime example of musical family life. As you can see in the box at left, four of the musicians bear the same last name. But their kinship chart includes some marriages, too. When the two quartets join forces, you’re watching a big family making music.

Lesson in breathing

The centerpiece of their recent joint concert at the Perelman focused on the family connections. Composer Dan Visconti wrote his 2011 octet Eternal Breath in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the parents of the four Freivogels on the roster. His title refers to the breath of life “passed from one generation to the next.”

Eternal Breath is built around a “breathing phrase” that gradually grows more elaborate. Daniel McDonough plays an Indian drone-instrument instead of his regular cello, and the drone of the shruti box marks the rise and fall of the breath.

Visconti’s long opening section is so simple and subdued that I was afraid we were going to be presented with an exercise in monotony. But it’s only a preliminary. Violist Sam Quintal launched into a long powerful solo, which merged with a great song in which each voice makes a distinct contribution, with the drone providing continuity. At the song’s climax, the individual voices become more pronounced and the eight musicians maintain a dynamic balance between individuality and chaotic cacophony.

Visconti could have ended the piece there. Instead, he returns, briefly, to his opening, and the octet fades as if it’s merging with its surroundings.

Tasteful hoedown

The Jupiter-Jaspers are the kind of performers who always know how a passage should feel. In the Haydn quartet played by the Jupiters at the program’s beginning, you could hear that quality at its best in the dark somber harmonies of the slow movement. In the scherzo of Shostakovich’s 1926 Two Pieces for String Octet, the combined quartets created a youthful frenzy that didn’t contain any echoes of the sarcasm you hear in the scherzos that Shostakovich created in his later years.

In the Mendelssohn E Flat Major octet that completed the program— one of the peaks of the chamber repertoire— the musicians applied a precise touch to the delicate fairy fluttering of the scherzo and followed it with a tastefully moderated country hoedown in the finale. Their Philadelphia appearance offered their audience a unique theatrical event: a functional family in full function.