Just outside Herbst Theater on this morning of the Ides of March, a huge peace demonstration unfolded, in an atmosphere of palpable helplessness and anger. Inside, the Alexander String Quartet performed Dmitri Shostakovich's last quartet (No. 15, from 1974), and the quartet's violist, Paul Yarbrough, with pianist Aglika Angelova, played the Viola Sonata from 1975, completed two months before the composer's death. The two works are characterized by feelings of the ultimate sadness, the final loss, yielding to acceptance. It was not a happy concert - or day - but at least, the sublime beauty of the music created an experience to remember and, in some ways, treasure. Musicologist Robert Greenberg, who completed a San Francisco Performances three-year retrospective of Shostakovich's chamber music with this concert, made no reference to a possible connection between the morning's events inside and outside of the War Memorial. He didn't have to. He spoke of the deep malaise in the music reflecting not only the composer's many neuroses and the extent of his physical illness, but also a lifetime spent in a repressive society, where the individual is powerless. Greenberg didn't have to spell out the similarity between the uncomprehending sorrow within and the intense frustration without, on the street. However unreal, the day's reality increased the music's intensity; the music, in turn, acted as a kind of narcotic or, more positively, an agent of assuagement. Helplessness, Greenberg mentioned several times, was a feeling the composer frequently dealt with, often saying that "we [humanity] are all marionettes." To avoid an unlikely, but possible misunderstanding: the parallel is of atmospheres, not between the repression of Shostakovich's totalitarian society and the current surreal chaos that is ours. I spent years in the composer's world, so I could not possibly compare facts between That and This, I am only registering an observation about the similarity of moods, ours so much more intense exactly because the feeling of helplessness is unprecedented. Although the Viola Sonata is Shostakovich's last work, it is the String Quartet No. 15 that feels more like a farewell, the final word. With "Elegy," "Nocturne" and "Funeral March" among the titles of the six connected movements, No. 15 is slow, quiet and sad in an unrelieved, but not morbid - and certainly not mawkish - manner. There is something zen or "trance-music" about the E-flat minor quartet, and once you're in its "zone," time feels suspended. It is 40 minutes of a road you'd rather not take, but once on it, the journey is both quiet and thrilling. At the end, there is a sense of being spaced-out or, for some, obtaining catharsis. Virtuoso performances by first violinist Zakarias Grafilo and cellist Sandy Wilson enhanced, rather than diminished the Alexander Quartet's usual magnificent ensemble playing. With second violinist Frederick Lifsitz and violist Paul Yarbrough, the quartet is reliably simple, unpretentious, effective - perhaps never more so than today. The Viola Sonata is a complex and layered work and yet Shostakovich's description of it as "bright, bright and clear" music is completely accurate. Greenberg also quoted Schnittke's verdict of "philosophical lyricism," but that doesn't come near explaining the conflict-and-conversion of complexity and simplicity. The performers reflected the work's duality, unintentionally. Angelova's bright, strong playing at times came close to overwhelming Yarbrough's warm and intimate sound, but the sonata's riches allowed for a less than perfect balance. The Bulgarian-born pianist (trained in Germany and now a San Francisco resident) brings an occasionally steely, mostly powerful and straightforward, no-nonsense approach to music, and for the Shostakovich sonata, it was exactly right... as was Yarbrough's lyricism. Janos Gereben/SF www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask]