| Quartet Endeavors
Trio 304 |
ReviewsTelegraph Quartet Plays Mozart, Weinberg, Dvořák It was the Feldman Chamber Music Society's fifth performance of this season and the Telegraph Quartet of San Francisco brought their “combination of brilliance and subtlety” to a local audience. The opening Quartet in D major I. 575 “Prussian” (1789) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was written with a prominent cello part (Jeremiah Shaw). This was one of three written for some kind of commission from King Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia who played cello, thus the nickname. The piece went down like the most delicate of desserts. The opening Allegretto (first violin, Eric Chin) was playful and festive. The Andante had a sweetly sung melody, both thin and rich by turn. We later learned that the melody hints at Das Veilchen (Violet KV 476), a Mozart art song, and is presented as a conversation between the violin and cello. The courtly, elegant Minuet kept Mr. Shaw very busy; otherwise, Mozart spread accents very evenly among all the players. They played with perfect clarity and symmetry. The cello's several solos and dialogues with other instruments—especially Pei-Ling Lin's viola—pleased us greatly. The evening's blockbuster challenge for the quartet and the audience was the complex, demanding Quartet No. 6 in E minor Op. 35 (1946) by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996). Violinist Joseph Maile (here, first violin) asked for a show of hands from audience members who had heard Weinberg's music before. I hesitated, only to realize later that I had a DVD of his opera The Passenger (first performed in 2006) recorded live at the Bregenz Festival, 2010. The plot of the opera grew out of Weinberg's background. He was born a Polish Jew who had fled to Russia when the Nazis came to power. His family stayed behind and did not survive the war. He became a favorite student of Shostakovich and later one of Shostakovich's favorite composers. When Weinberg's opera score was published, the preface was signed “Dmitri Shostakovich, Moscow, September, 1974.” Weinberg's daring, riveting sixth Quartet was banned (as were dozens of other works) by the Soviet government in 1948 and was never performed in his lifetime, nor was his opera. Weinberg's string quartet has six movements. The first features the Locrian scale. It is effective as a sad tune in the first violin with the extravagant sound of loud, plucked second violin strings while at times the cello was played as if it were a bass. The second Presto Agitato movement opens with vigorous ensemble playing; their chopping bow strokes were totally engaging. The second and third movements, played without pause, offered a wild tarantella while the third has no settled key, creating great intensity. There was a hint of a Klezmer tune there as well. The Adagio fourth movement was more relaxed, echoing a Bach fugue but with disconcerting counterpoint. The midway point of the work brought a dizzying and unstable climax. I felt lost in space when the composer used five notes played in the space of four—a stumbling but hurried motion also utilized in The Passenger. The fifth movement had skittish violins ripping up and down scales until the cello offered a high, lyrical motif answered by savage plucking in the other voices. The sixth and final movement brought back all the composer's ideas: Locrian mode, tarantella theme, legato lines and more. The intensity and too much sameness was tiring—he needs an editor! It seemed to be nearing a conclusion but launched in again. The standing ovation was for the stellar playing of this most difficult music. After a long intermission which offered us several animated conversations about the Weinberg piece, we were soothed by Antonín Dvořák's (1841-1904) Quartet No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 51 “Slavonic” (1879). It was a dessert after a heavy meat and potatoes meal by Weinberg. Slavic folk music inspired Dvořák's lush, tonal, melodic music of great warmth. Like Mozart, Dvořák used Classical sonata form, here with two polka-like themes. But, like Weinberg, his development “dithers” between major and minor. A dance-like second movement begins as a lament followed by sheer exuberance, then back and forth between the two moods for contrast. The third movement, slow and song-like, is one of Dvořák's loveliest. To paraphrase the program: The finale smiles at us, takes our hand and pulls us back into the dance with sustained octaves of a folk tune reminiscent of a hurdy-gurdy. The melody is a lively Bohemian "fiddle tune" that will whirl inside our heads for the rest of the night. The Telegraph Quartet was totally engaged in the music they offered with high energy and polished playing. Do not miss them if they come to your town.
Billed as a Spence Academy for Strings event, it was an evening with a new, local chamber group hosted by the Governor's School for the Arts. The violinists were Johnathan Spence and Olivia Cottrell; the cellist was Jesse Smith and the violist, Andrew Minguez. The program included three works performed in reverse chronological order of when they were written: Shostakovich's first string quartet, Beethoven's number 11 and lastly Beethoven's first string quartet. The puzzle of why these three quartets were chosen for this program became clear with a little research. The connection I found between Beethoven's quartet No 11 and Shostakovich's first quartet was that the Shostakovich work was influenced by innovations Beethoven had made. Let us look at the Beethoven No. 11 first. The most substantial work of the evening was Beethoven's String Quartet No 11 in F minor, Op 95 “Serioso” (1810). Ten years earlier Beethoven had written his first quartet. Now a more confident master of form, with his freed, fertile mind, he returns to the string quartet. By this time he had become the composer who made his own rules and was harassed by his own internal demons. Part of the magic of the string quartet medium is that it can simultaneously be both vast and intimate. Here a group of four players articulate thoughts and feelings as a conversation among friends. This visionary work with its economy of gesture and intense psychological probing looks toward the 20th century, creating a powerful new world of high tension and fury, connecting us to Shostakovich. Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 1, in C Major Op 49 was played first on the program. Shostakovich was a man harassed by external demons—the Soviet State. Through his music, Shostakovich says what he needs to say but privately. Shostakovich saw the string quartet as one of the most difficult musical genres. He composed his first quartet shortly after the great success of his 5th Symphony and warned his friends “Don't find special depth in this, my first quartet opus. In mood it is joyful, merry, lyrical. I would call it 'spring-like.'“ This is what I heard: from the start the melody was a little “off-key” and this sound was often spare. The second movement offered an ethnic-sounding tune, a Jewish folk tune perhaps. Plucked cello strings were soon joined by the other players with intensity. This sad sound is replaced by a pleasant tune. The lyrical third movement has a busy, happy, tumbling of many notes. The fourth movement sets out with all players on a new voyage, exuberant and a bit abrasive like a dance with a whiplash ending. All four played ardently and with precision. Ludwig van Beethoven's (1770-1827) String Quartet No. 3 in D Major Op 18 (1798-1800) was his first written string quartet though it was published as No 3. Nearly all the motion is in the first violin, played by Johnathan Spence, and supported by sustained harmonies by the other instruments, reminding us of Haydn, Beethoven's teacher. Throughout it is sweet and tuneful with a mellow cello. Beethoven already displays the passionate sound that characterizes his musical language. It is easy to recommend this new chamber group to our listeners. Go and hear for yourselves!
Gabriele Skinner, a Governor's School for the Arts alum and most recently with Houston Grand Opera, was here with her fiancé Thomas Glass to visit her family. It was most fortunate that with the help of teacher and Virginia Symphony violinist Jorge Aguirre, the young, greatly talented trio could reprise an art song recital they presented in Nantucket recently. Thomas Glass with four others won the Met National Council Voice Competition this year. The story, with Glass' photo, was in the Sunday, May 5 New York Times where we learned that one of his choices of arias was from Jake Heggie's Moby Dick, the only work by a living composer on the program. Mr. Glass sings beautifully and superbly communicates the meaning of the song texts. As Melissa Wagner, the executive director of the National Council Auditions, says: “Really great singers can get on that stage and change the room.” That was our experience in the Slover Library's sixth floor Community Engagement Room with its cityscape and sky views. The third member of the trio, Kyle Naig, is an experienced pianist and opera coach, currently at Houston Grand Opera for a second year. The trio met in Houston and 304 was their shared apartment number. All three share a passion for modern chamber music and are working to expand their repertoire. The trio opened with Gestillte Sehnsucht (Satisfied longing) by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) from his Op. 91 Zwei Gesänge. This and the deeply romantic songs that followed, are settings of poems about nature walks that turn introspective. Here the poet muses on a frustrated love long past: “bathed in golden evening light” with sweet strains of viola and piano. Two songs by Francesco Santoliquido (1883-1971) from his I canti della serra (1908) (Evening songs), sung in clear Italian with beautifully floated notes, reminded one of verismo opera arias sung with bel canto passion. The songs: Tristezza crepuscolare (Twilight gloom) and L'incontro (The Encounter). L'incontro tells the story of a man who had been infatuated with a woman in his youth, meeting her years later and hoping for a kiss: “We will never forget this moment of love.” With only piano accompaniment the singer expressed the wonderful ardor of youth. Santoliquido was a sensitive but unoriginal talent and a notorious contributor to the fascist press, claiming that modern music was “an invention of the Jews.” (Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 16 (1980 edition). Only once before have we heard songs by this composer and we enjoyed them as we did these. The trio turned to modern music with What to feel among trees (2019) by Trevor Hofelich (b. 1992). Hofelich is a Governor's School for the Arts graduate, where he and Ms. Skinner met, c. 2010. Mr. Hofelich went on to take his Masters at Mannes School of Music. Mr. Glass seemed to be focusing inward to prepare for this intense piece. The text: “I feel certain the madness will stay ...not a dream...as stars extended...” To calm us after the overwrought emotions of Mr. Hofelich's song of madness, the next piece was a vocalise lament with viola by Howard Frazin (b. 1962) titled Lullaby (2008). The clever text and the viola set the mood and evoked a sense of twilight to darkness and dawn to daylight. It was touching! Mr. Glass will sing both a male and a female role in a new work by Frazin this year. Four of the six songs of America 1968 (2008) by Tom Cipullo (b. 1956) for voice and piano came next. The composer has said of The Point (Stonington Connecticut) that Robert Hayden's most moving poem is a “celebration of the transcendent meeting of light and water at land's end where the river meets the sea and wild swans, terns and sunbathers gather on the lambent shore.” The Whipping contains rhythms and cadences of urban violence of 1968: Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; the violent Tet Offensive took place in Viet Nam; the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics. The story is about a boy scrambling to avoid blows from an old woman striking him with a stick. It was a frightening experience, created by the singer and the pianist's passionate playing. In Those Winter Sundays the passion is quiet as a man reflects on the debt he owes his father for his care when he was a child. Only now does he connect emotionally to the care given so long ago. The last song, Frederick Douglass, looks forward to the day when equal civil rights become a fact in America rather than the “gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians” as it was in 1968, just as it had been in Douglass' lifetime. The performance encapsulated so much intense emotion of fifty years ago and the present. The trio closed the program with music by Charles Loeffler (1861-1935) 4 Poèms Op. 5 (1904). First let's first get acquainted with this all but forgotten emigrant American composer. Charles Loeffler (1861-1935) was born in Alsace of German parents. He was musically gifted and an aristocrat. The family lived briefly in Kiev, Ukraine, later Hungary, and then Switzerland where at age 14 he decided to become a musician. Studying music in Berlin he became restless and left for Paris where he acquired the elegance and purity of style that we heard in his 4 Poèms, settings of poetry by Baudelaire and Verlaine for baritone, viola and piano. He came to the U.S. In June 1881 at age 20 and joined the violin section of the Boston Symphony which over time presented all of his orchestral works, including the world premiere of A Pagan Poem (1907), his greatest success. He then retired to his secluded New England farm where he spent the last thirty years of his life with fine horses, epicurean cuisine and composing. Basically, his music was impressionistic and cosmopolitan with French, Russian, medieval, Irish, Spanish and jazz elements. Finding the texts of 4 Poèms online turned the lovely sound of Mr. Glass' singing into a more complete experience. The first song is La Cloche Fêlée (The Cracked Bell). In the piano we hear the distant bell that reminds the poet of his past war experiences of blood and death. He gets in touch with his anger in Dansons la gigue! (Let's Dance the Jig), he looks into his lover's pretty eyes “where malice lies.” Thomas Glass told us that the cycle is all about the arc of a relationship. The third song, Le son du cor s'afflige vers les bois (The sound of the horn is wailing near the woods) compares the sound to a wolf weeping in this drowsy lament where he gets in touch with his grief. Sérénade tells of a voice that speaks from the grave, harsh and out of tune. But he also recalls the sound of the mandolin, her blessed body's opulent perfume and “your sweetness in making a martyr of me.“ He is still fatally attracted to her! This potent romantic music was sung with clarity and passion enhanced with rich viola and piano, sometimes philosophical and introspective, at other times dramatic and bitter. A breathtakingly dramatic performance of forgotten songs! Back to Top Printer Friendly
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