'Muß es sein?': Joel Krosnick Departs

Carter, String Quartets 1-5, Juilliard String Quartet (Sony, 2014)

When Ionarts came into being in the early part of the millennium, the Juilliard String Quartet was still in residence at the Library of Congress. The group has continued in various formations, returning to play at the National Gallery in 2008, for example. This season is the last for cellist Joel Krosnick, the only current member who played with founding violinist Robert Mann. The group returned to the Library of Congress on Saturday afternoon for Krosnick to take a valedictory lap, cheered on by many listeners who remember the good old days.

Things are looking up for the Juilliard, since the new additions are encouraging. Joseph Lin, who joined at first violin in 2011, had an overall powerful primarius sound, especially pretty at the high end. Violist Roger Tapping, formerly of the beloved Takács Quartet, joined in 2013, and although he was largely invisible in the opening piece, Schubert's Quartettsatz, he came to the fore in many solo moments in the middle work, Elliott Carter's first string quartet. (Tapping joined the Juilliard after the group had recorded Carter's fifth string quartet, released in a set in 2014, with the earlier recordings of the first four.)

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, A changed sound is heard in Juilliard Quartet’s concert at Library of Congress (Washington Post, February 28, 2016) Zachary Woolfe, Juilliard String Quartet Shows Agility at Alice Tully Hall (New York Times, November 24, 2015)

Neither of these pieces showed the quartet's new formation in the best light, however, due to some intonation issues in the first violin in the Schubert. One does wish that the Juilliard had chosen something other than the Carter, a work hard to love in spite of Lin's long, purple-prose introduction. The listener does come across moments of beauty here and there, like the lovely muted duet for the violins in the slow movement or the "boogie-woogie" passages in the third movement, here from a composer who had actually heard boogie-woogie.

At the cello Krosnick is not up to his former standards, but he seemed most at home in Beethoven's final string quartet, op. 135. Rather than the autumnal solemnity of some late Beethoven, the piece takes many jovial turns, brought out with a flexible sense of ensemble in the first movement. The bright-eyed, rollicking Vivace was nimble in all parts, with a sense of eye-twinkling from Krosnick's seat, and the slow movement showed off Lin's warm low-string sound. To the cellist's insistent repetitions of the head motif in the finale ("Muß es sein?", or Must it be?), the quartet took comic delight in chattering (musically) the response ("Es muß sein"). The latter is a reference to a comic canon Beethoven composed in 1826, informing a patron, who wanted to have a performance of one of Beethoven's string quartets in his house, that yes, the patron must pay the required fee to have a copy of the score ("Es muss sein! Ja ja ja ja! Heraus mit dem Beutel!," or It must be! Yes yes yes yes! Out with the wallet!). An encore, the slow movement from Mozart's K. 465 ("Dissonance"), offered a final moment of farewell.

#morninglistening: Conrad Tao, Pictures

#morninglistening to #Takemitsu #Carter #mussorgsky etc. w/@conradtao on @warnerclassics … http://t.co/KeSAHrNaw0 pic.twitter.com/2ySF1zx80m

— Jens F. Laurson (@ClassicalCritic) October 1, 2015

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Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Charles T. Downey, Library of Congress’s contemporary music show scores
Washington Post, April 11, 2014

E. Rautavaara, String Quintet No. 1 (inter alia), Sibelius Quartet, J.-E. Gustafsson (Ondine, 1998)

The past week’s concert schedule has been loaded with contemporary music, from an anniversary celebration for Louis Andriessen to a residency by British composer Oliver Knussen. In the midst of it all, the Library of Congress hosted a performance of yet more recent music on Thursday night, as part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s touring program. A slate of musicians performed selections from the last two decades, which were paired with the monumental “Quartet for the End of Time” by Olivier Messiaen.

Pierre Jalbert’s... [Continue reading]

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Music by Jalbert, Carter, Rautavaara, Messiaen
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Einojuhani Rautavaara, Rasputin (2006) | Percussion concerto with BSO
Rautavaara's conclusion to Sibelius's sixth symphony (Vienna Symphony)

Contemporary Valentine from the JACK Quartet and Ursula Oppens

Charles T. Downey, JACK Quartet offers lively interpretations of new music at Library of Congress series
Washington Post, February 17, 2014

Feldman, Spring of Chosroes, P. Zukofsky, U. Oppens (CP2, 1991)

An important mission of the concert series at the Library of Congress is to commission and present new works of contemporary music. Both aspects of that role were showcased Friday night, as the JACK Quartet, leading specialists in new music, performed a program of music mostly from the last half-century, including two pieces commissioned by the Library of Congress.

The oldest music in the concert was composed by Morton Feldman, beginning with “Spring of Chosroes,” commissioned by the Library’s McKim Fund in 1977. Pianist Ursula Oppens premiered the work with its dedicatee, violinist Paul Zukofsky, and she performed it here with Ari Streisfeld, one of the JACK violinists. Like Feldman’s “Structures” for string quartet, from 1951, this is understated, heavily repetitive music, but it diverts rather than bores because Feldman introduces unexpected, minute variations into those repetitions. [Continue reading]

JACK Quartet and Ursula Oppens, piano
Feldman, Spring of Chosroes / Structures
Ferneyhough, Exordium: Elliotti Carteri in honorem centenarii
Carter, Piano Quintet
Adès, Piano Quintet
Julian Anderson, String Quartet No. 1 ("Light Music," U.S. premiere)
Library of Congress

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, JACK Quartet @ NGA (June 4, 2012)
Michael Lodico, Library of Congress Begins Carter Tribute (May 31, 2008)
---, Brentano's Late Style (May 3, 2008)

Jennifer Koh at Strathmore

Bach and Beyond, Part 1, J. Koh (released on October 30, 2012)

Jennifer Koh gave a commanding solo performance Wednesday night in a program that honored the enduring relevance of J. S. Bach, both as a touchstone for composers after him and as a voice that directly appeals to audiences now. Filling the Strathmore Mansion's cozy music room with an electrifying sound, Koh used two Bach partitas, pinnacles of the violin repertoire, to bookend a selection of later pieces that were in some way inspired by them. The concept, titled Bach and Beyond, has generated a series of recitals and a new recording. Unfortunately, program notes to elucidate the connections between pieces were not provided, though they should have been readily available since the concert had already been performed elsewhere.

Koh opened with Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major. She summoned a vigorous tone for the suite’s sunny, expansive Preludio. In the intimate Loure that followed, Koh set up an elegant rhythm but could have quieted her sound more; it was loud and a bit harsh even toward the back of the small room. From the partita Koh moved without pause into Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2 in A minor. This was an obvious pairing, since the sonata begins by quoting the partita’s opening phrase. But Ysaÿe soon turns away from Bach in frustration to brood over the medieval Dies Irae tune. What follows is not a particularly profound engagement with Bach but rather an undistinguished hodgepodge of overwrought late-Romantic sounds bites. Nonetheless, it served as a vehicle for Koh’s virtuosity, from the bleak strains of the second movement, played with a haunting, vibrato-free tone, to the third movement’s meaty pizzicatos.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, ‘Bach and Beyond’: Jennifer Koh’s unsentimental guide to the composer’s legacy (Washington Post, November 16)

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne was the night's shortest but perhaps most intriguing work. It was a hushed exploration of the violin’s different timbres, ranging from percussive scratches to spectral harmonics. The subtle adjustments of bow position and pressure that Saariaho called for allowed Koh to reveal the richness of overtones contained within each note. Next was the fidgety, angular Fantasy by American composer Elliott Carter, who died two weeks ago, followed by Lachen verlernt (“Laughter unlearnt”) by Saariaho’s countryman Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958). This anguished, cathartic work was written in Bach-inspired chaconne form, which tied it to the evening’s final piece. Koh closed with Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor, crowned by its monumental last movement, an emotionally and intellectually intense chaconne that is a violinist’s Everest. Koh’s fiery technique was a perfect match for the work’s challenges, and she gave it a memorable performance.

Henze, 86, and Carter, 103

Henze, L'Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe Henze, Symphonies 1-6 Carter, Complete Piano Music

Carter, Complete String Quartets Carter, What Next? Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 8 (16 Compositions, 2002-2009) Carter, Cello Concerto

Two giants of modern composition died this week: Hans Werner Henze on October 27, at 86; and Elliott Carter on November 5, at 103. For all of their importance to connoisseurs, neither of these composers has much traction even among fans of classical music. Henze's music gets played very little on this side of the Atlantic: although we have admired the gorgeous orchestration of his operas, we have written relatively few reviews of performances of his music, most of them from Germany. The last piece by Henze played by the National Symphony Orchestra, for example, was not one of his compositions but his rather wonderful orchestration of Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder. The neglect on this side of the Atlantic is puzzling, because although Henze's music is recognizably modern -- meaning that many tradition-minded listeners will bristle -- it has a Romantic opulence, especially in the evocative orchestration, that has much to offer an audience.

Allan Kozinn, in a fine obituary of Elliott Carter in the New York Times, quotes the American composer thus: “As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public, [but] I learned that the public didn’t care. So I decided to write for myself.” Audiences seem to have perceived that thumbing of the nose in their direction, and Carter's music is generally a very hard sell to audiences other than those who listen to new music ensembles. Even so, we have written much more about Carter's music because it is played more often here than Henze's, although the majority of our reviews have been of recordings or little pieces inserted into programs of other music. The monuments of Carter's extensive oeuvre -- he was composing almost into his final days on this earth -- are the string quartet cycle (for the second half of the 20th century what Bartók's six quartets were for the first half), his existentialist black comedy of an opera (What Next?), the small body of piano music (recorded by Ursula Oppens), and the major concertos. The style of Carter's music contains multitudes, from his early, more neoclassical works, through merciless complexity, and ending in Haydnesque, even whimsical miniatures. The links on either side of this article will take you to a few favorite examples of the music of both Carter and Henze. Feel free to add some of your own choices in the comments section.

We are reaching many milestones in modernism as the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring approaches. As more of the heroes of confrontational composition join the great Darmstädter Ferienkurse in the sky, perhaps it will be time for composers at least to ponder the idea of not intentionally alienating their listeners.

Notes from the 2012 Salzburg Festival ( 7 )

Salzburg contemporary 9

Amid the grumbling discontent about Alexander Pereira’s Salzburg commercial Culture-Olympics, several major and minor starry moments pop up. That’s hardly surprising: any festival so bent on presenting the biggest names and piling up sheer quality has got to register its share of hits.

Monday at the Mozarteum such a minor starry moment took place when the Zehetmair Quartet and Heinz Holliger (as oboist, composer, and concert programmer) performed the “Salzburg contemporary 9” concert. A program of Elliot Carter, Mozart, Holliger himself, his onetime student Gustav Friedrichsohn, and Robert Schumann took place before a meagerly filled hall. Good thing the “Youth! Arts! Science!” program of the pharmaceutical company Roche channeled exactly one-hundred students into the stalls which made them look filled; the balcony remained entirely empty.

E.Carter, Oboe Quartet, Figments 1 & 2 et al., H.Holliger, Zehetmair Quartet ECM

Mozart’s Oboe Quartet proved a lovely, lightly croaking amuse-gueule, incisively performed: a warm-up for the Elliot Carter’s in every way more challenging Oboe Quartet, which scrapes and cackles on stage in syncopated rhythms. It’s a coy, hectic work that Carter has written eleven years ago—at the sprightly age of 93—and dedicated to Holliger.

While Ruth Killius tuned her instrument for “Three Sketches for Violin and Viola”, Holliger took a chair, sat down at the edge of the stage and gave an impromptu Austrian premiere of Carter’s latest piece for oboe, the brief, lyric and melodic “Figment No.6”. “Because”, Holliger told the audience with an impish waggle of his head and his ingratiating Swiss accent, “it’s been written that contemporary music is taking such a back seat at this year’s Festival.”

Following the suggestive simplicity of Friedrichsohn’s “From Darkness on a Shadowed Path”, equally written for Thomas Zehetmair’s violin and Killius’ viola, came the Zehetmair Quartet’s specialty: Schumann. If only the First Quartet in A minor, or either of the other two quartets, were always performed with such panache and empathy, they wouldn’t suffer want from performers’ and listeners’ attention. Zehetmair & Co. moved Heinz Holliger’s Second String Quartet to the end of the evening, to give it pride of place. Dedicated to Carter, and riddled with very well hidden references to the great quartet composers that have become before Holliger (not that I discerned any, myself) it is an insistent work. The last movement, using double stops and humming on part of all four players, musters a blend of 12 musical lines that bring it to its otherworldly end.

Ionarts-at-Large: Alex Ross' Belmont Prize and an Evening of Americana

When Douglas Boyd spoke passionately—in his beautiful melodic Scottish—about Charles Ives as one of the most enigmatic 20^th century composer to the audience of the Munich Chamber Orchestra’s audience, the introductory excerpts of the hymn tunes took on a slight melancholic Scottish twang. His preparatory remarks fell on fertile ground, as a good part of the audience had already been readied to appreciate an evening exploring a century of American (East-Coast) music by the preceding prize ceremony where Alex Ross received the Forberg-Schneider Foundation’s Belmont Prize and chatted with the MKO artistic director Alexander Liebreich about music in general and “The Rest is Noise” in particular: A charming, if none-too profound conversation, spiced-up and in turn defused by Liebreich’s narcissism and Ross’ near-diffident modesty.

Programming American music (with the possible exception of Carter who appeals to European modernist-seeking audiences) is usually a recipe for empty halls. It speaks to the intelligent programming and meticulous audience-building of the MKO that the beautiful Prinzregententheater was full. And once audiences turn out to hear it, whether prepared to accept the music or not, they do embrace American classics.

C.Ives, Symphonies 2 & 3, A.Litton / Dallas SO Hyperion E.Carter, Sound Fields etc., O.Knussen / BBC SO Bridge A.Copland, Clarinet Concerto et al., S.Drucker / L.Bernstein / NYPhil DG

They certainly appreciated Aaron Copland’s snappy Clarinet Concerto and particularly the snake-charming contortions of Martin Fröst. The Swedish instrumentalist appreciates the physicality of playing the clarinet to the point of distraction, but never at the expense of unrivaled gorgeous playing. The bold white borders of his black suit (with equal hints of Wild West, Pan Am 70s revival, and Barnum & Bailey’s) picked up the Americana-theme of the evening. It also enhanced how Fröst associates every phrase with a motion or position. That, in turn, suited the stereotype that Copland created; a kind of resounding Americanism that never was, but that hit—literally—a chord with its audiences. It reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse’s characters that created a world of their own; real shadows of an invented reality. Until the cadenza finally penetrates this soppy world of would-be concord, it is a simple, calm beauty that pervades the Copland concerto. Especially compared to Ives’ Third Symphony which preceded it.

Charles Ives begins his Symphony with deceptively harmonious pleasantries that glide upward with the grace of imaginary young ladies on their way from Sunday school to the debutant ball. The honest, sturdy chorales and hymns seem innocent on their arrival in the brass. But Ives gently breaks each tune’s spine and bends them into a new construction of his own—a fluid musical cubism that reminds superficially of Mahler-episodes, except without the vulgarity. Humorous sometimes, sometimes clamorous, but the original grace—morphed manifold—remains the red thread that leads through it. When chords of Ives’ don’t go into the conventional direction they don’t melt subversively or rebelliously as they are prone to do in, say, Schnittke. Instead they strike as a wholly novel, brilliant solution to a new kind of beautiful. A marvelous composition that rewards keen ears on every new listening.

Listening to Elliot Carter, two things usually come to mind: “Boulez, but with a smile” and “Haydn”. Not that Carter and Haydn have any cursory commonalities, but the geniality of Carter, his humor (not in the ‘comic’ sense, but the mood and its underlying wit) seems to rhyme with Haydn. It is as if Carter was so secure in his pared-down, formally sound sophistication that he doesn’t also need to be unnecessarily serious about it. In that spirit, I found that the ears seemed to nod as they listened to his 2007 “Sound Fields”, as though the offering were optional, not didactic. The underlying pulse is undeniable—all the way to its stolen last sentence in B-flat-major.

Fitting, that the finale was a Haydn Symphony: The peckish Symphony N0.83 (‘La Poule’), which got a terrific performance that underlined the violent surprised and boldness throughout and kept the Minuet from becoming sonic duty with a jazzy bend. Avant-guard from 1785.

Picture © David Michalek

Best Recordings of 2010 (# 6)

This continues the “Best Recordings of 2010” countdown. No.10 can be found here, No. 9 here, No. 8 here, No. 7 here. The lists from the previous years: 2009, (2009 – “Almost”), 2008, (2008 - "Almost") 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

# 6 - New Release

Elliot Carter & Udo Zimmermann, Cello Concertos, Jan Vogler, Kristjan Järvi, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, NEOS SACD

E.Carter, U.Zimmermann, Cello Concertos, Vogler / Järvi / BRSO NEOS SACD

A disc with just 39 minutes of playing time? Yes. And not only do I think that’s not a problem, I like it. There is no reason that in 2010 any published sound recording should be measured by how close it gets to the (now) arbitrary 80-minute mark that the CD has standardized. That limit has just about become meaningless. SACDs can only fit about 70-some minutes on a disc. But SACDs with regular definition content can fit up to ten hours. If audio-only BluRay discs become common, the limit is even higher (will we complain then, if the music on one disc doesn’t max out the storage capacity?), but more likely the very idea of “capacity” is going to go, as we are moving toward streaming, downloading, and media servers. The blurb on press flyer justifying the short playing time doesn’t even go into that, but is just as right: "We deemed it appropriate not to dilute the impact of these two works by adding any filler, just to get to a greater play time for this SACD." Bravo!

I’ve written about the concert from where this CD was recorded here. Elliot Carter’s Cello Concerto with its searching and confused solo cello opening—courtesy Jan Vogler—is pierced by orchestra stabs that are as short as they are vigorous, which then mellow considerably as they travel through the orchestral sections one by one. The orchestra has one surprising moment approximating lyricism, the cello part is often barely played, timidly screeching like cats at night with broken hearts. Atypical for Carter, the meandering work makes it difficult to perceive any musical purpose or goal, though the end has a coy smile that gives Carter, even at his most modern, that human touch that many of his modernist colleagues lack. By the way: Happy Birthday Elliot!

Still more intriguing on this disc is Udo Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto “Songs from an Island” which received its world premiere performance here, under Kristjan Järvi and with Vogler. Zimmermann is in charge of the Musica Viva series, so seeing a composition of his at his ‘own’ event—though the first in over a decade—wasn’t terribly surprising. The work itself, its quality and listenability, is surprising though. It starts with lengthy, fragmented quotes from Schumann’s “Ich hab im Traum geweinet” (Dichterliebe, op.48) which allow the cello to do what it can do best: sing. While the cello is almost incidental to Carter’s concerto (any instrument—a dulcimer, for example—might have served equally well), here it is stipulated by Zimmermann’s music. Purpose, truth’s little cousin, is established and the mind can begin to grasp and the ears can go on a journey with the composer. Zimmermann hides behind Schumann for the beauty; typical of the reflexive cowardice of modern(ist) European composers when it comes to musical consonance. “Is that allowed? Is this an Anti-Concerto” his notes at the concert disingenuously questioned and eagerly postulated. But better beauty and purpose under a pretense than not at all, and that’s what we get: The concerto is gorgeous, even when it gets busy, noisy, and tangled. Via perceptible ideas and motifs, through recognizability and musical craftsmanship Udo Zimmermann has arrived, if not at truth, so at least in reality.

# 6 – Reissue

Johann Wilhlem Wilms, Symphonies 6 & 7, Concerto Köln, Brilliant Classics 93778

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Matt Haimovitz: Not One Iota More

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Haimovitz's "Figment"
Washington Post, October 20, 2009

Matt Haimovitz brought his latest CD program, "Figment," to Arlington's Iota Club and Café on Sunday afternoon. For several years, the Juilliard-trained cellist and professor at McGill University has traded on the alt-classical notoriety of performing in unconventional venues, but he drew a crowd that was no more diverse and not much younger than a typical concert hall audience. They even sat in reverent silence for the entire 75-minute program, even though it started half an hour late and had no intermission.

The playing had a bubbly, slightly unfocused energy, adding to the disorienting lack of rhythmic center prominent in the CD's title work, by Elliott Carter. A rasping tone and more elegiac smoothness came to the fore in Ana Sokolovic's "Vez." The amplification of Haimovitz's cello worsened the gaminess of some scratchy high harmonics, in works by Gilles Tremblay and by Haimovitz's wife, Luna Pearl Woolf. It made the noisy electronics component of Du Yun's "San" almost unbearable. [Continue reading]

Matt Haimovitz, cello
Iota Club and Café (Arlington, Va.)
Music by Carter, Sokolovic, Tremblay, Woolf, Du Yun, Stucky, Bach

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Matt Haimovitz, Figment (released on September 29, 2009) Oxingale OX2016

Other Review:
New York Times

In the earlier concerts on this tour Haimovitz appeared with composer Du Yun, and the spontaneity of their interaction may have been a large part of what was missing at Sunday's performance (Du Yun had to return to New York after the Philadelphia concert with Haimovitz). The CD has a much more finished (and artificial) sound, which although it is not a must-have by any means features some pieces worth getting to know, including Sokolivic's Vez, the Carter pieces, Tremblay's Cèdres en Voile (Thrène pour Le Liban), and especially Stephen Stucky's Dialoghi.

Matt Haimovitz Previously on Ionarts:
2008 recital | Bach cello suites

Ionarts at Large: American Night at Munich’s Musica Viva

American contemporary music is supposed to be difficult to program in Europe. It’s still too modern for the traditional concert clientele, but too bourgeois for the avant-garde-happy audience reared on—and expecting—the heavyly intellectual fare of Boulez, Stockhausen, or Ferneyhough. The listenable, downright popular (shudder!) American contemporary music of Glass, Reich, Adams, Del Tredici, Argento, Corigliano et al. is too “middle brow” an attendee sympathetic to these composers suggested, “and European culture just doesn’t do ‘middle brow’. Only extremes.”

But perhaps times are changing and the ears are regaining primacy over the mind when it comes to music, because the Herkulessaal in Munich was not only very well filled, but the response was also wholly positive after what amounted to “Easy Listening Night” at the 7^th Musica Viva concert in 2009. Steve Reich’s Three Movements for Orchestra (1986), the oldest work on the program, was the curtain raiser. Full of the pleasing predictability of Reich’s propulsive beat it was just the work to warm up the ears for Elliott Carter’s 2001 Cello Concerto. The searching and confused solo cello opening—courtesy Jan Vogler—is pierced by orchestra stabs that are as short as they are vigorous, which then mellow considerably as they travel through the orchestral sections one by one. The orchestra has one surprising moment approximating lyricism, the cello part is often barely played, timidly screeching like cats at night with broken hearts. Atypical for Carter, the meandering work makes it difficult to perceive any musical purpose or goal, though the end has a coy smile that gives Carter, even when at his most modern, a human touch that many of his modernist colleagues lack.

The dashing, ever-suave Kristjan Järvi led the Bavarian State Orchestra through all works with panache, his looks, self-consciously sexy stance, and debonair movements conveying the air of a young, classical Jon Bon Jovi on the rostrum. John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007) was more notable for the incredibly well played solo trumpet part and the finale’s bracing build-up than for the music itself. While it’s easy to get a bad suite out of a great opera (Rosenkavalier!), it’s rather difficult to get a good suite out of a modest opera. A competent botch job that benefits from the omission of vocal parts, the Doctor Atomic Symphony nearly manages that feat, though.

The surprise of the evening was Udo Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto “Songs from an Island” which received its world premiere performance. Zimmermann is in charge of the Musica Viva series, so seeing a composition of his—the first in over a decade—wasn’t terribly surprising. The work itself, its quality and listenability, was, though. It starts with lengthy, fragmented quotes from Schumann’s “Ich hab im Traum geweinet” (Dichterliebe, op.48) which allow the cello to do what it can do best: sing. While the cello is almost incidental to Carter’s concerto (any instrument—a dulcimer, for example—might have served equally well), here it is stipulated by Zimmermann’s music. Purpose, the little cousin of Truth, is established and the mind can begin to grasp and the ears can go on a journey with the composer.

Zimmermann seems to feel naughty for throwing this tonal bone to the listener. The liner notes spend considerable time justifying the daring occurrence of harmony. As a truly modern European composer one would not want to be considered a reactionary, after all. Perhaps Zimmermann is right about being worried. (“Is that allowed? Is this an Anti-Concerto” the notes disingenuously question and eagerly postulate. ) After all, this ‘taking the listener by the ear’, gently, and harmonically pulling him his way… this acknowledgment of purpose (in instrumentation and structure) is the very negation of Zimmermann’s (and the whole avant-garde music scene’s) underlying and often trumpeted notion of the “paradigm shift” that had allegedly occurred in our listening habits.

The concerto is gorgeous, even when it gets busy, noisy, and tangled. The heartfelt reception and genuine applause must have been quite different than the usual, cool admiration. Via perceptible ideas and motifs, through recognizability and musical craftsmanship Udo Zimmermann has arrived, if not at truth, so at least in reality. A warm “welcome back”.

Mozart’s Birthday in Salzburg: Fröst's Mozart, Holliger's Haydn, Gerhaher's Veress

This week was Mozart’s Birthday, and what better way to celebrate than to spend a little time at the “MozartWoche” in Salzburg, one of the annual star-powered festivals in Salzburg.

Twenty three concerts in ten days, with artists Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, the Capuçon Bros., Dennis Russell Davies, Bernarda Fink, Martin Fröst, Christian Gerhaher, Susan Graham, Werner Güra, Magdalena Kožená, Marc Minkowski, Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, András Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, the Artemis-, Hagen-, and Minguet Quartets, Camerata Salzburg, Concentus Musikus Wien, Ensemble intercontemporain, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. And that’s just a selection.

I skipped the first three days and started with what was supposed to a chamber performance of the Capuçons, Fröst, Antoine Tamestit (ARD Viola Prize Winner), and Sergio Tiempo. Unfortunately Tiempo got sick and Renaud Capuçon elected to practice the Berg Violin Concerto (due today in Munich with the BRSO) instead, and the replacement pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa was more pale patch than surprising delight. Her distressingly trivial Haydn Sonata (Hob:XVI 49) is best kept mum about, her Mozart B-minor Adagio K540 was made unbearable by a superimposed profundity of the shallowest kind, and both of Beethoven’s sets of Variations for Cello and Piano wouldn’t have been transformative experiences, even if Gautier Capuçon had elected to play in the same pitch as the pianist, rather than putting on the artiste, closed eyes, dramatically raised eyebrows, and all.

The chamber music fared much better. Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio in E-flat was the sole survivor of the original program (a tantalizing juxtaposition of just Birthday-Boy Mozart and Anniversary-Papa Haydn) and in this 2+1 trio, Föst and Tamestit gave an example of what musical communication in chamber music should be like. Brahms’ Clarinet Trio, a somewhat arbitrary filler, was appreciated for Fröst’s contribution who, even in a less than concentrated state, is incapable of unlovely music-making. He engages in the potentially distracting snake-charmer movements common to clarinetists, but closing one’s eyes confirms the consistent, unfettered and clear beauty of his tone.

The New Mozarteum is an impressive building, surprisingly aesthetic for its bulky size and rigorous modernist look. It contains a good sounding concert hall (“Solitaire”) with a spectacular view over the Mirabell Gardens over to the Mönchsberg. Waiting for Carolin Widmann, I hear sounds coming from the Solitaire upstairs that evoke a group of musicians testing the exact breaking point of a piano, cello, and violin. It turns out to have been Widmann & Co practicing Matthias Pintscher’s work “Svelto”. From the piano rooms in the back faint sounds of a student practicing the same Schumann phrase over and over round out the delicate cacophony.

I missed the performance of “Svelto” the next day, where it was part of an almost four hour long “Concert & Conversation”, juxtaposing Mozart with Pintscher. The idea of loosening up the ears with familiar sounds between the demanding complexities of modern works is great in theory. In practice, ensembles spend all their time practicing the new, difficult piece, and perform Mozart (or Haydn, or whatever else it may be) on autopilot. Mozart’s String Quartet in d-minor K421 suffered thus, with only the cellist attempting to bring calm and cohesion to the work, and then only for one movement.

Pintscher’s talk with Stephan Pauly about the world premiere of his “Study IV for Treatise on the Veil” for string quartet (inspired by Cy Twonbly’s painting of the same name) was full of empty phrases about “spatial relationships”, “states of density”, “duality and autonomy”: European feuilleton-speak of the worst kind, supported by projections of artworks by Giacometti, Beuys and of course Twombly. (The unintended comedic element of continuously pronouncing the work “Treatise on the Veal” was sadly lost on the rapt audience.) Strangely, some of those platitudes began taking on relevance during the half hour “Study IV”, and the fragile Giacometti sculptures received audial context.

The work comes across as a breathy study of sound, heavily muted sounds of a freight train station or under-water sea lion chatter, occasionally and violently punctuated by shrieks. The first violinist’s hitting the score in a few agitated moments could have been intentional or accident: with music like this, who knows. The score was, to the limited extend one could tell, performed superbly, delicately, and with enormous precision. It would have fit seamlessly into the exhibit of a modern art museum, which is part compliment, part warning: It’s aesthetically impressive art, but does being museum-bound make contemporary music instant taxidermist’s material, dead-on-arrival? Twenty minutes into “Study IV”, the first actual “string quartet sounds” appear, only to slip back into the atmospheric clatter. But the critical ear noted with surprise: The 30 minutes sounded like 15! “Study III for Treatise on the Veil” for violin solo—performed, fully engaged, by Carolin Widmann—followed, and it sounded like paper and stone—a bit like what might be left if a composition by Kaja Saariaho had all its music filtered out.

Mozart still didn’t get a particularly genial Birthday present in Alexander Lonquich’s Sonata in F, K533/494, but what a difference to the morning’s interpretation. Rather too bold and a little harsh, at least here was a concept and interpretive intent with which one could disagree, rather than no concept at all. The concert continued for another 90 minutes, with more Pintscher (said “Svelto” and “Janusgesicht for Viola and Cello”) and Mozart’s Quartet in E-flat, but I had to run—not from the music, but to my next appointment.

The evening set the first musical exclamation mark. René Jacobs, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, and the RIAS Chamber Choir presented Haydn’s Creation. A very homogeneous, wet sound (as if covered by several silken veils, down to the timpani), resulted in a warm and comfortable orchestral glow. Maximilian Schmitt, who had rid himself of the gray fuzziness that surrounded his voice for the first few minutes of the first and (after the break) third part, was surrounded by Johannes Weisser—strong and radiating—and strong yet mild, surprisingly dramatic soprano Julia Kleiter, whose comfortable voice has a brassy, matte golden hue, aided by spot-on accuracy. Dramatic also the smallish orchestra, which displayed the “roaring lions” with the most garish possible brass exclamation and made the floor boards creak at “Den Boden drückt der Tiere Last”. There was nothing chamber-like in the rousing, powerful contribution of the RIAS Chamber Choir. (An aside: Does anyone else hear hints of the First Act Finale of “L’Italiana in Algeri” in the music to “und ewig bleibt sein Ruhm”?)

Another treat, squeezed between a score of interviews, was experiencing Nicolaus Harnoncourt in rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, getting Haydn’s Harmoniemesse in B-flat ready for performance.

Fröst, meanwhile, got at it again on Tuesday, the 27^th, when he played the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A, K622 on the basset clarinet it was intended for. The sense that Fröst was not entirely at ease but encountered moments where he had to fight a little lent intensity to what might otherwise have been too sparkly and pretty a performance. The way he held the last note of the Adagio until it died away into infinity, just to jump immediately into the eagerly excited Rondo Allegro was just one of the touches that make his performances so special. He followed Mozart with Carter’s Clarinet Concerto after intermission, which had a more difficult stance with the audience. But with concentration and accuracy in ample supply by soloist and the Camerata Salzburg, the chamber qualities and violent whiplash of the work came through well.

It caught me by surprise, but most successful and remarkable was the conducting of Heinz Holliger. I thought of him as a instrumentalist and composer, known for his conducting primarily in modern repertoire. No revelation that his Carter was excellent. But how absolutely smudge-free the muscular neo-classicism of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin shone through French romanticism—full bodied and delicate—was truly special. And the concluding Military Symphony by Haydn was worthy of hyperbole. While its initial delightful, gentle sounds elicited a light chuckle of relief from the Carter-shocked audience, the violence and war indicated by the symphony’s title made their presence known just a few bars later. It turned out to be the most intensely theatrical reading, with the trumpets charging headlong into their music (just like the opening of Mahler’s Fifth), and the three man military percussion group marching into and through the auditorium in the finale. A gimmick, but delightful and impressive. Undoubtedly the best performance of this symphony I’ve ever heard—and well possibly the best live Haydn Symphony I’ve had the pleasure to hear. Haydn’s Symphony No.104 and Mozart’s Symphony in C, K338, aided and abetted by Christian Gerhaher in Mozart arias and Sándor Veress’ dark, brooding Elegie, were just about as fine.

Ursula Oppens and Elliott Carter

E. Carter, Complete [Solo] Piano Music (released on October 14, 2008) Cedille CDR 90000 108

Although Elliott Carter had at least some facility at the piano himself, the famously centenarian composer did not compose at the keyboard or pass through a piano sketch phase to reach the final version of most of his works. In the fine liner essay to this reference recording of Elliott Carter's piano works, Bayan Northcott observes that "until his 86th year, [Carter's] published catalogue for solo piano comprised just two scores: the Sonata for Piano (1945-46) and Night Fantasies (1980)." The lion's share of this Carter centenary disc, recorded by the pianist and champion of contemporary music Ursula Oppens, is devoted to those two works, which represent the two poles of Carter's compositional development.

Oppens turns in a masterful reading of the sonata, if still not supplanting the unparalleled version by Charles Rosen. We were lucky enough to hear Rosen play the work live at La Maison Française a few years ago, the best way to experience this music, because the fragile overtone effects are difficult to capture in recording. Night Fantasies was commissioned by Oppens, Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish, and Charles Rosen, and the latter has called it "the most significant new contribution to the repertoire of transcendental pianism since Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit." Where the piano sonata is the last gasp of Carter's Boulanger-esque neoclassical style, Night Fantasies marked a switch to much greater rhythmic and harmonic complexity. Oppens was the one who had to premiere the work in 1980, and it is a good thing that she is able to receive audience booing in the best light -- she is an able ambassador for some blisteringly difficult writing.

The music on the rest of the disc consists of short character pieces from the last two decades. Oppens has included two world premiere tracks: Matribute, from 2007, and Caténaires, from 2006. The latter is the most successful miniature Carter has composed for the piano, at the tender age of 98, a Prokofiev-style moto perpetuo toccata of repeated notes and jabs of sound that served quite nicely as an encore for Pierre-Laurent Aimard's Shriver Hall recital last year. For these and the other works composed since 1999 (Retrouvailles, from 2000, Two Diversions, a piece for children from 1999 that we heard played by Jean-Marie Cottet at La Maison Française, and Intermittences, from 2006), Oppens supersedes the earlier Rosen disc in terms of its completeness. However, the final track of that 1997 disc, a conversation between Rosen and Carter, makes it still valuable for Carter completists (all five of you).

70'53"

Take the chance to hear Ursula Oppens, joined by pianist Amy Briggs, when they perform with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra for Mozart Dances, presented by the Mark Morris Dance Group (January 29 to 31) at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. The music includes two Mozart piano concertos (K. 413 and 595), as well as the D major sonata for two pianos (K. 448).

Messiaen à 100 ans

Olivier Messiaen at the Great Organ, in the South Gallery of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C., during a visit on March 16, 1972 (photo by George Tames)

As noted earlier this week, Olivier Messiaen was born on December 10, one hundred years ago. Appropriately -- yet somewhat surprisingly -- La Maison Française was the only venue to offer a commemorative program. That it turned out to be a free concert, after issues with the visa for the visiting musicians cropped up, guaranteed a full auditorium at the French embassy, filled with many faces familiar to me, those of local musicians, critics, and composers. They were there to listen to a piece that all of them I spoke to referred to as life-altering, Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, performed by four musicians from the Orchestre du Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, cellist Alexis Descharmes, violinist Thibault Vieux (who is the orchestra's assistant concertmaster), clarinetist Jérôme Julien-Laferrière, and pianist Jean-Marie Cottet.

Carter, Works for Cello, A. Descharmes

Before that work, reserved for the second half, we were also treated to the observation of another 100th birthday, that of Elliott Carter, who has actually lived long enough to witness his own centenary on Thursday, with a big cake at Carnegie Hall. Alexis Descharmes is known for his devotion to contemporary composers, as his fine recordings of the complete works for cello by living composers, including Kaija Saariaho and Elliott Carter, have shown. He anchored this beautifully crafted set of Carter pieces, opening with the 1948 cello sonata, a work more in Carter's Nadia Boulanger-influenced neoclassical style. Like Matt Haimovitz, who played the piece a couple months ago here, Descharmes milked the lyrical cello line of the first movement, presented over a quasi-Baroque walking bass texture in the piano. The second movement was a light-hearted scherzo, with fizzy pizzicati and staccato touches in the piano, and the cello cantillation in the slow movement was fervent, although Descharmes's tone high on the A string sometimes wobbled wide of the mark.

The more traditional sound was bookended by Carter's 1944 Elegy, arranged by Descharmes for the same instrumentation as Messiaen's Quatuor, the Coplandesque dewiness, bordering on the grotesquely lacrymose, forming a misty-eyed tribute to Carter. In between were five detailed miniatures for the players' respective solo instruments, all composed in the last decade of the 20th century. Descharmes has already proven himself at La Maison Française, but it was here that his colleagues showed their chops, especially Julien-Laferrière, whose rendition of Gra for solo clarinet, from 1993, was an encyclopedic game of textures, attacks, and melodic interest, with an exemplary tone that did not get shrill in the stratosphere. The overtone effects called for by Carter in this piece were ghostly.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Elliott Carter at 100: His Candle Still Burns (Washington Post, December 15)

The quartet's rendition of the Messiaen Quatuor fell on the short side of average timings, at 50 minutes with pauses in between. The tempo choices gave a cursory quality to some of the movements, especially seeming to cheat the eternity and immortality of Jesus (nos. 5 and 8), although the dissolve from fortissimo al niente at the end of the fifth movement was beautiful, like ice melting away under sudden heat. Time slowed but did not seem to cease, as it can in more extravagantly slow performances. The effect was worsened, surprisingly, by the slightly prosaic approach of Cottet to the many repeated chords in the piano part, which were skillfully voiced but often seemed too much like one another. Some of the most effective playing came in the first movement, Liturgie de crystal, where the sense of time being charted, separated, recombined came across in the flowing ostinato of piano chords and the disembodied sound of the sliding cello. As forecast in the Carter set, clarinetist Julien-Laferriere was the centerpiece, with breathtaking (-giving) control in the third movement’s notes that crescendo from nothing to crushing power. It was a performance with many good parts that did not quite add up to something great.

The inauguration of Barack Obama has scuttled the plans at La Maison Française to host François-Frédéric Guy playing the complete sonatas of Beethoven in January. However, he will be featured in their next concert -- just one -- on January 22.

Matt Haimovitz Goes Modern

Odd Couple, M. Haimovitz and G. Burleson (released September 16, 2008) Oxingale 2015

Cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Geoffrey Burleson are on a concert tour, to promote their new CD, Odd Couple, recently featured on NPR. Their travels brought them to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington on Sunday night for a sold-out concert, featuring all but one of the four selections on the recording. Haimovitz and Burleson may have doubts about the compatibility of their two instruments, a misgiving reflected in the CD's title, but the program is centered on two of the more convincing sonatas for this pairing.

Elliott Carter, soon to celebrate his centenary while still alive, wrote his Sonata for Cello and Piano back in 1948, when he was a mere 40 years old. The piece is in the less stringently serialized style of the composer's early works, and Haimovitz did more to champion it by his introduction, which clearly primed many in the audience to listen to it with open ears. Haimovitz's tone was slightly fragile and timorous in the first movement, but a jazzy fizz bubbled into the second movement's free sense of rhythmic disjunction. There were hints of cantillation or Asian folk melody in the third movement and more pointillistic textures in the fourth.

Where Haimovitz and Burleson did sound like an odd couple was in an unconvincing and possibly under-rehearsed Beethoven fifth sonata (D major, op. 102, no. 2). The dry acoustic exacerbated the cello's jejune tone and the piano's hammered, sometimes rough octaves. It would have been better, surely, for the duo instead to play the remaining piece on the CD, by Augusta Read Thomas. The most recent work in the program fared better, David Sanford's 22 Part I, the composer's tribute to the omnipresence of the number 22 in his life. Haimovitz and Burleson clearly felt most at home with the modern pieces, this one above all. Sanford's sense of rhythm, influenced by later jazz like the music of Ornette Coleman, is just as complex as the most serialized atonal pieces. What jazz avoids, unlike the "atomization of rhythm" (as John Adams put it) in the post-Darmstadt composers, is a regularity, a metricality that allows the ear to follow complex patterns with greater ease of understanding. Haimovitz and Burleson drew out the many coloristic effects in the second movement, especially many slithering and fluttering passages for the cello, and the jagged rhythms all somehow added up to a whole rather than sounding like fractured splinters.

Other Reviews: Mark J. Estren, Matt Haimovitz and Geoffrey Burleson (Washington Post, September 16)

The final work, Samuel Barber's op. 6 sonata, is more consciouly backward-looking, with a Brahmsian delight in low sonorities and in hemiola and duple-triple oppositions. Here Haimovitz's tone finally opened up into a luminous, passionate howl in the second movement, and again there were jazz-influenced harmonies in the third movement, which seemed to hover between earnest Brahmsian rhapsody and something heard in a hotel barroom. Many of the shifts between tempi seemed unnecessarily exaggerated, and a certain rhythmic freedom (or laxness) was noticeable, as it was to my ears in Haimovitz's recording of the Bach cello suites. The encore made Barber's tribute to Brahms clear, with a substantial movement from the latter composer's second cello sonata, op. 99.

The next concert in the Polinger Artists of Excellence Concerts Series at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville, will feature the Brillaner Duo with cellist Amit Peled (November 2, 7:30 pm).

Library of Congress Begins Carter Tribute

Pacifica Quartet: Elliott Carter [Review] Felix Mendelssohn

On Thursday evening pianist Christopher Taylor joined the Pacifica Quartet for Elliott Carter’s Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, beginning the Library of Congress’s year-long salute to Carter’s centenary. As this piece was programmed in the region earlier this month by the Brentano Quartet, the LoC should be proud of the longevity of the compelling work they commissioned a decade ago for Carter’s 90th birthday.

Carter divides the work’s single movement between percussive clusters for piano and angular textures for string quartet. Taylor, an incredible pianist with a seemingly endless appetite for contemporary music, was awarded first prize at the 1990 Kapell Competition at the University of Maryland. (An acquaintance at the concert recollected experiencing Taylor’s brilliant performance of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, played without a score.) Back to Carter’s Quintet, the work begins and ends with a single note from the piano. The amount of meaning Taylor placed in these notes was immense, and the cacophony between them always clear and of brilliant tone. Unfortunately, the Pacifica’s rather vague approach to this challenging work allowed Taylor to easily dominate. Taylor’s mathematics degree from Harvard possibly allows him to analyze the construction of Carter's music at a level beyond most musicians.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Pacifica Quartet (Washington Post, May 31)

The sense of the Pacifica possibly being under-rehearsed was further experienced in Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A Minor (the same one the group played in the area in 2005), where their impressive, uninhibited playing and striking volume were undermined by inconsistent attacks and releases (from the second violinist, particularly). First violinist Simin Ganatra conveyed the appealing tune of the third-movement Intermezzo very sweetly.

The Pacifica ended the program with their strongest work, Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major (op. 59, no. 1). With spring-like optimism, the rising themes burst forth with clarity and uniform gestures that were lacking in the Mendelssohn and Carter. Joy was felt when the quartet surged beyond the fifteen repeated unison notes of the second movement’s theme, while the third-movement Adagio was beautifully phrased. Programming Carter’s Quintet between such contented works was appealing. The encore, a Tango by Piazzola, had a nice groove with periodic slides up the fingerboards.

The Library of Congress's concert season ends tonight, with an all-Schubert program from pianist Inon Barnatan, violinist Liza Ferschtman, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein (May 31, 8 pm). The [New York] premiere of Carter’s Interventions, for piano and orchestra, is scheduled for Carter's birthday, with Daniel Barenboim, James Levine, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (December 11 at Carnegie Hall).

Brentano's Late Style

Brentano String Quartet -- (L to R) Mark Steinberg, Serena Canin, Misha Amory, Nina Lee (photo by Christian Steiner)

Ever since Prof. Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk’s Conservatorium van Amsterdam course on programming, the last of my academic career, I have yearned to experience programs with a point. Thursday’s compelling program by the Brentano String Quartet at the Clarice Smith Center, entitled Late Style, threads together “works that often sum up, transcend, or otherwise branch out and explore,” as first violinist Mark Steinberg wrote in the program notes. Alex Ross points out in his review of the Brentano program (End Notes, May 5) in The New Yorker that composers have “careers that can be plotted as steadily rising curves.” The Brentano demonstrated this trend with a program of late works by Mozart, Carter, Bach, and Bartók.

Composed in the year before Mozart died, the Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589, featured the Brentano’s comfortable, virtuosic playing and fluent tempos that were neither fast nor slow, but always just right. Their ease as an ensemble was further reinforced in that the group uniformly interpreted the work’s figures, or shapes, instead of playing endless strings of notes. This allowed the sharp accents in the third movement (Menuetto) to puncture through the texture; though Steinberg generally had the edgy tendency to veer toward the high side of the pitch. Given his untimely death, it is questionable that this work, or any of Mozart, especially compared to the likes of Brahms’s op. 122, may be considered “late” according to Steinberg’s construction.

On the other hand, Elliott Carter’s 1997 Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, commissioned by the Library of Congress for his 90th birthday, allowed the audience to experience the outcome of a true “steadily rising curve.” Indeed, one assumes that Carter’s curve has continued to rise in the past decade -- the premiere of Interventions, for piano and orchestra, is scheduled for December of this year by Barenboim, Levine, and the Boston Symphony.

Other Reviews: Daniel Ginsberg, Brentano String Quartet (Washington Post, May 3) Allan Kozinn, Late Works, From Composers 34 to 89 (New York Times, March 1)

The versatile pianist Thomas Sauer joined the Brentano in the cacophony of the work described by Carter as “one movement of many changing characters and contrasts.” Never stuck in the notes, Sauer and the Brentano’s lack of technical struggle in this vicious work allowed the audience to fully engage without becoming stressed out by the musical challenges. Steinberg often conducted beat patterns with the end of his violin, which reinforced the strong internal tempo seen and felt by the ensemble.

Contrapunctus XIV, the last pages from Bach’s incomplete Art of Fugue featured a nice moderate dynamic, though it was overall too linear, polite, and ungrounded rhythmically, thus preventing the counterpoint from sparkling. One also wonders why the Brentano brought such a sad humor to the work; a more confident, masterful approach with proud subject entrances would have been stronger, thus leaving the sadness for the grave silence after measure 239, where the music ceases mid-phrase. It was also somewhat obscure not to include a fugue containing the basic Art of Fugue subject in its original form, which would have given the audience better bearings. The program ended with Bartók’s String Quartet No. 6, a wandering work that is at times introverted, extroverted and folksy at others, yet always embodying a conflicted loneliness.

For another chance to hear Elliott Carter's Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, there is the concert by the Pacifica Quartet at the Library of Congress later this month (May 29, 8 pm).

Pacifica Quartet @ Kreeger

Available at Amazon: Elliott Carter, String Quartets 1 and 5, Pacifica Quartet (released January 29, 2008) Naxos 8.559362

Last year the Kreeger Museum made our list of Five Favorite American Buildings, and on Saturday night a concert by the Pacifica Quartet provided another excellent excuse to spend some time in the house that Philip Johnson built. The Pacifica has recently released the first volume of a 2-CD set of the string quartets of Elliott Carter, and the almost-centenarian composer's latest, no. 5, was on the program. The "new vision" Carter has attributed to this work could be described as a postmodern program, with the four instruments not only playing a series of movements but, in a juxtaposed layer of interludes, commenting on each movement. At the same time, the score drives the players through merciless technical demands of all kinds, with very little that sounds like unity. Carter compared it to the process of a quartet rehearsing, that is, the sound of the fifth quartet is a string quartet preparing to play the fifth quartet.

Some time spent with the score confirms that what sounds like misalignment is what Carter intended. In the second movement (Giocoso) and the garrulous sixth movement (Presto scorrevole), when the four voices are actually playing together, they have complicated patterns that do not line up (sixteenths, triplets, fivelets, sevenlets). Expressive moments also abound in the murmuring clusters of the fourth movement (Lento espressivo) and especially the fractalized harmonics of the tenth movement (Adagio sereno). That was the most beautiful part of hearing the quartet live, the sound of those layered harmonics, mostly piano and pianissimo. The sound is memorable on disk, but in a hall, bouncing off stone, the metallic, slicing sound seemed to reprogram my ears, as if my atoms were being split and the particles flung wide across the universe.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Pacifica Quartet (Washington Post, April 14)

The two other selections provided interesting parallels, intended or not, to the theme of conversation. Mozart's K. 387 features a chromatic rising line in the second movement and a fugal subject in the last movement passed among the instruments. Although the cello of Brandon Vamos had a smooth tone in his second-movement solo moments, at other times his tendency to force the sound resulted in strident growls. Simin Ganatra's first violin seemed shallow-voiced at first in the third movement but deepened to a more singing quality. Far more suited to the Pacifica's strengths was the final work, Smetana's first string quartet (E minor, "From My Life"). In this piece, intended as a sort of autobiography, the four instruments, "as in a circle of friends, talk among themselves about what has oppressed me so significantly."

Here, as in the Carter, violist Masumi Per Rostad proved the most distinctive individual voice of the quartet (he also writes a sporadic online journal for Gramophone), playing the part taken by Antonín Dvořák when this quartet was first performed in Prague. The polka had a pleasing folk rubato, contrasted by a more Viennese trio, with a tang of tango in it. The third movement (Largo sostenuto) opened with an intense cello solo, followed by the thick, searing first violin. In another parallel with Carter, Smetana's fourth movement includes a summary of themes from the preceding movement, which came to an impossibly soft conclusion, leaving the audience in stunned silence.

The Pacifica Quartet will be back next month, with a concert dedicated to Elliott Carter at the Library of Congress (May 29, 8 pm), including the piano quintet.