Musicians from Marlboro I

Mozart, String Quintets, Talich Quartet, K. Rehak (La Dolce Volta, re-released in 2012)

Charles T. Downey, Musicians at Marlboro provide lovely reading of Mozart
Washington Post, October 9

The touring concerts from Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival returned to the Freer Gallery of Art on Thursday night. The three works heard at this concert all feature unusual chamber music combinations, made more feasible by the festival’s variable programming format, with so many musicians on hand each summer.

“By general consent,” wrote pianist Charles Rosen, “Mozart’s greatest achievement in chamber music is the group of string quintets with two violas.” The doubling of Mozart’s beloved viola opened a vista of greater contrapuntal possibilities. The last of the set, K. 614, is also the final piece of chamber music that Mozart composed, not long before his death in 1791. Lead violist Rebecca Albers gave a lovely plangency to her part’s solo moments, while first violinist Hye-Jin Kim played with an occasionally unpleasant stridency that led to minor intonation problems. The group brought out the details of Mozart’s final tribute to Haydn in this piece, especially the folksy, drone-ridden trio of the third movement and the droll starts and stops of the finale.

Discovering the “Three Poems in French” for soprano and string quartet by Earl Kim (1920-1998) made me want to hear more from this Korean American composer. Soprano Hyunah Yu’s beautiful but slender voice allowed her to fit into and at times hide within the tightly coiled clusters and repeated motifs of the strings.

Pianist Kuok-Wai Lio brought technical polish to Fauré’s first piano quartet (C minor, Op. 15), keeping his cool even in the head-spinning finale. The second violinist and violist from the Mozart took the lead parts here, with violinist Danbi Um especially producing graceful, understated sound.

The second and third installments of the Musicians From Marlboro series will be held at the Library of Congress (Jan. 20 and May 6), because the Freer will be closed to the public starting in January.

Musicians from Marlboro I
Music by Mozart, Kim, Fauré
Freer Gallery of Art

SEE ALSO:
Vivien Schweitzer, Musicians From Marlboro, With Works by Mozart and Fauré (New York Times, October 6)

Shanghai Quartet Plays Sheng, Aldridge

Charles T. Downey, Shanghai Quartet shows dedication to new music in Freer Gallery of Art concert
Washington Post, March 1, 2014

Beethoven, String Quartets (op. 59/2-3), Shanghai Quartet (Delos, 2006)

On Thursday night the Shanghai Quartet returned to its old haunt at the Freer Gallery of Art, whose free concert series the quartet has graced regularly since 1995. Expectations demand that it play a mix of Eastern and Western music and that some new music be included, both of which are the quartet’s specialties. On those two counts, certainly, this concert was a success.

Bright Sheng’s fifth string quartet pushed the musicians to the edge of their abilities, from the brutal “Bartók” pizzicatos in the cello that open the piece and punctuate its sections, a tribute to the Hungarian composer whose “Miraculous Mandarin Suite” inspired the quartet’s subtitle, “The Miraculous.” Frantic pizzicatos and whirring scales did not always line up as they should here, and something about the interpretation revealed the work’s repetitive nature. [Continue reading]

Shanghai Quartet
Music by Sheng, Haydn, Aldridge, Verdi
Freer Gallery of Art

SVILUPPO:
This concert was not, as billed in the program, the Washington area premiere of Bright Sheng's fifth string quartet. The Emerson Quartet, for whom it was written, played it on their Smithsonian Associates series in 2007.

PREVIOUSLY:
Shanghai Quartet: 2006 | 2005

'Et in Arcadia ego': Adès on Mortality

T. Adès, Arcadiana (inter alia), Endellion Quartet

It was time last night for the first Musicians from Marlboro concert on the free concert series at the Freer Gallery of Art. Some of the most engaging performances (and their performers) are selected to be sent on tour around the country between summers, when the festival is held in Vermont. In the case of this program, featuring a piano trio and a string quartet that shared some members, it was almost certainly Arcadiana, a fascinating work for string quartet by British composer Thomas Adès, that was the reason for this program being sent on tour.

The most recent string quartet by Adès, Four Quarters from 2011, struck me as a major work when it was performed by the Arditti Quartet here last year. His first attempt in the genre, from 1994, was new to my ears in this performance, and it was perhaps more obtuse but just as fascinating to unravel. Adès has a way of eliciting unexpected sounds from instruments, often combining them in surprising ways, a talent that goes back at least as far as this work, completed when he was still in his early 20s. Glissandi and percussive barking attacks gave a growling, sometimes human vocal quality to many of the movements, with sounds like sighs in sliding pizzicato notes. He makes some outrageous demands on the players, like the flautando, ultra-high harmonics in the first violin in the second movement. This group -- violinists Scott St. John and Michelle Ross, violist Emily Deans, and cellist Matthew Zalkind -- does not perform regularly as a quartet, but the luxury of several summer weeks in Vermont made possible an astounding grasp of the work.

Adès took his title not just from Arcadia, the name of a region of Greece held up by classicizing scholars in the 17th and 18th centuries as the ideal location of a golden age of poetry. Adès references the painting by Poussin known as Et in Arcadia ego (at left), which explains much of what he is trying to do with the piece. The phrase "Et in Arcadia ego" goes back to a painting made by Guercino in 1621, and Poussin's famous variation on it in the same way shows shepherds discovering a tomb with the words as an epitaph. The meaning, as if spoken by the dead person -- or by Death itself -- is that death, too, is in Arcadia. As M. Owen Lee put it, in Death and Rebirth in Virgil's Arcadia: "Even in the enclosure where all is supposedly timeless happiness, death is present." Adès seemed to evoke this idea by quoting music -- a section of Mozart's Magic Flute, a Schubert song, Elgar's Nimrod variation -- well, really, processing more than quoting, as it often seemed to have gone through a food processor and was now a sort of sonic purée. For all of its quizzical effect, one was left with a feeling of nostalgia, as if to say that death has claimed all those composers, too, and perhaps even their music, one day, will ultimately die.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, Music From Marlboro program returns to Freer Gallery (Washington Post, November 22)

The other three pieces on the program were far less extraordinary, both in terms of the music and the performance -- still pleasant, but there were no other real delights until the encore, which brought together all five musicians for the Scherzo movement of Dvořák's piano quintet. Beethoven's Variations for Piano Trio on Wenzel Müller's dippy song Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu, op. 121a, was a reminder of Beethoven's fondness for weaving great things from the humblest of fabric. Fauré's D minor piano trio (op. 120), completed in the year before the composer died, has pretty moments but is episodic and more than a little saccharine, especially given that it was composed almost a decade after Rite of Spring. Its third movement uses a short motif that is an (unintended?) quotation of the words "Ridi, Pagliaccio!" from Vesti la giubba, the famous aria in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. In Mendelssohn's E minor string quartet (op. 44/2), all four musicians produced a beautiful tone and played with energy, if not always a taut sense of ensemble, but the result still felt a little sterile.

The other two Musicians from Marlboro concerts at the Freer are planned for the spring, on April 10 and May 10, 2014.

The Writing on the Wall

Charles T. Downey, A valiant ‘Belshazzar’ at Freer Gallery
Washington Post, April 22, 2013

Handel, Belshazzar, A. Rolfe Johnson, A. Auger, English Concert, T. Pinnock [Review of Jacobs DVD]

Cyrus the Great has been admired by many people, from the ancient Hebrews to the Greeks to Thomas Jefferson. When Cyrus conquered the Babylonians, he freed many enslaved people and returned the cultural objects stolen from them. The Cyrus Cylinder, made to commemorate these events, is on display at the Sackler Gallery, on loan from the British Museum. At the Freer Gallery of Art on Saturday night, the Gallery Voices and the Smithsonian Concerto Grosso performed selections from Handel’s oratorio “Belshazzar,” which recounts the demise of the Babylonians, based primarily on the biblical Book of Daniel.
[Continue reading]

Handel, Belshazzar
Libretto by Charles Jennens
The Gallery Voices and Smithsonian Concerto Grosso
Freer Gallery of Art

Momenta Quartet at the Freer

Since its founding in 2004, the Momenta Quartet has voraciously championed new music, averaging one world premiere for every two of its concerts. On Thursday night, the quartet brought that venturesome spirit to the free concert series in the Freer Gallery of Art’s Meyer Auditorium. The program, featuring music inspired by Buddhism, presented four pieces written within the last ten years — two commissioned by Momenta — along with one mid-century touchstone.

First was the String Quartet No. 4 (“Clouds Surging”) by Malaysian-born composer Kee Yong Chong (b. 1971). Though his program note cited a Buddhist poem about gazing up at clouds, the music seemed to carry listeners on an airborne journey through them. The two violinists were placed on either side of the audience, and this, together with an exhilarating use of dynamic contrast, created a true stereophonic immediacy. Momenta’s command of extended techniques was evident; often a rapid gesture began as a steely scratch on an instrument’s bridge, only to evanesce as a fluty whisper high on the fingerboard.

Four TEEN, by Ushio Torikai (b. 1952), presented a compelling psychological narrative based on the experience of walking through a Zen garden. String Quartet No. 2 (“The Flag Project”) by Huang Ruo (b. 1976) was inspired by the bright Buddhist prayer flags bestrewing many windswept Himalayan peaks. Each of the performers gamely doubled on a pair of Tibetan finger cymbals. At one point, the cello channeled the gruff intonations of monks beneath a brilliant din of bells; at other times, string bows were drawn across the cymbals to create a shimmering sound.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Momenta String Quartet offers music ‘Inspired by Buddhism’ (Washington Post, November 10)

After intermission, an intricately crafted, but somewhat dry, study of disquiet by Jason Kao Hwang (b. 1957), If We Live in Forgetfulness, We Die in a Dream, was followed by the String Quartet in Four Parts by John Cage (1912–1992). This bleak, subdued work was perhaps more radical than any of the newer pieces on the program. Having no hint of human feeling, its “melodies” seemed random (though the piece comes just before Cage fully embraced chance as the ruling principle in his music). An occasional snatch of what sounds like medieval chant only heightens the detached effect. Momenta performed it appropriately, with patient concentration and without expression.

Some pieces were accompanied by projected visual art, including an evocative video work by John Gurrin. These often beautiful images were displayed unobtrusively offstage. Apart from one unforgettable picture seeming to show two rows of spermatozoa facing off in a line of scrimmage, one’s focus could remain on the rich musical program and the Momenta Quartet’s first-rate performance.

East Meets West, Uncomfortably

See my review of the latest concert at the Freer Gallery of Art:

East Uncomfortably Meets West (The Washingtonian, October 14):

L. Janáček, String Quartets, Prazak Quartet

The free concert series at the Freer Gallery of Art intends to encourage the rapprochement of European and Asian musical cultures, but it often ends up demonstrating how uneasy such a union is. The latest concert there, on Thursday night, featured a selection of European and Japanese music combining the Lark Quartet with koto player Yumi Kurosawa. Music from both cultures were best represented by their own traditions, while a couple new pieces that attempted to cross the divide did so somewhat uncomfortably and with little success.

The Lark Quartet was last heard in Washington in 2005, at the National Academy of Sciences. Since then, it has welcomed a new second violinist and a new cellist, part of a turnover trend in the ensemble over the years. The one thing that has remained the same is that the group has been, pointedly, an all-female ensemble since its founding, something that was still unusual in the 1980s when groups like the Colorado Quartet were challenging a male-dominated classical world. In recent years, the foursome has been concentrating on genre-crossing collaborations, a focus perhaps leading them to style themselves, apparently in earnest, as the “LARK Quarte+” on their Web site. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Anne Midgette, Yumi Kurosawa and the Lark Quartet at the Freer and Sackler Galleries (Washington Post, October 15)

Baroque Music from Four Nations at the Freer

See my review of the Four Nations Ensemble at the Freer Gallery of Art:

Music from Four Nations at the Freer (The Washingtonian, September 20):

Leclair, Violin Sonatas, First Book, F. Biondi, R. Alessandrini

Once in a while, music finds its way to a near-ideal performer. This is exactly what happened last night with the pieces performed by soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, in a free concert with the Four Nations Ensemble at the Freer Gallery of Art. The local soprano sounded at her best, with a silvery tone of faultless intonation and slender accuracy, beautifully suited to the museum’s small Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Auditorium. The purity of the voice was featured most simply, and beautifully, in an unaccompanied performance of Dividido el Corazon, a solo chant-like song composed in the New Mexican missions in the 18th century that is an impassioned lament by the Virgin Mary over the death of her son.

The programming concept was to bring together music of European-trained composers in the 17th and 18th centuries, from four different parts of the world—Europe, Latin America, the American colonies, and China. Lamoreaux also gave a light-footed dancing quality to the South American villancico by Alonso Torices, Toca la flauta, a charming little piece accompanied somewhat rustically by cello, flute, and violin. Plus the director of the Freer’s concert series, Michael Wilpers, pressed into service to beat the tambourine (unfortunately not always in sync with the often complicated beat). The Arcadian cantata O Daliso, by Domenico Zipoli, an Italian composer transplanted late in life to Argentina as a Jesuit missionary, was enlivened especially by Lamoreaux’s impeccable theatrical sense. However, the first aria in the piece, Per pietade, seemed to be paced too quickly for the sighing motifs to sound much like sighs. Three songs of Philadelphia-based composer Benjamin Carr were likewise saved from insipid sentimentality by Lamoreaux’s wry but also sincere approach. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Cecelia H. Porter, Going for baroque at the Freer (Washington Post, September 24)

Musicians from Marlboro

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Clarinetist Sarah Beaty (Photo: sarahbeaty.co.uk)

Marlboro Music, the venerable music festival in Vermont, comes to Washington three times a year when performers bring some of the summer's programs to the Freer Gallery of Art. These free concerts are most welcome to those of us, unlike Alex Ross, not lucky enough to spend some time in the summer at Marlboro, chatting with Mitsuko Uchida over her personalized plate and cappuccino cup at the campus coffee shop. The first installment of this year's three Musicians from Marlboro concerts was last night, and it combined one beloved gem of the chamber music repertoire, Mozart's clarinet quintet, and three less familiar, more recent pieces.

The discovery of the first half was mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson, a current participant in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development program. She produced a rich, limpid tone, evenly balanced from a coffee-dark bottom to a ringing top that was never strained or strident, a voice one hopes to hear many times more. She sang Ottorino Respighi's extended song Il Tramonto from memory, the Italian translation of Percy Shelly's poem The Sunset illustrated by the composer's string quartet arrangement of the score. The sound of this kind of warm but not overpowering voice with string quartet is so appealing: one wishes for an entire program of such pieces for a future season of Vocal Arts D.C. The quartet pieced together from Marlboro provided lush chords, searching lines curling upward, and a dark-hued background for the song's tragic turn, unfortunately with some infelicitous intonation. Johnson's other piece was just as effective, a 2003 song cycle, Der Gayst funem Shturem, by last year's composer-in-residence at Marlboro, Robert Cuckson. These Yiddish poems (.PDF file) by Binem Heller are a reflection on the tragedies of the Warsaw Ghetto, which the poet managed to escape. The score's odd combination of instruments may reflect the ensemble that was available to the composer, but the possibilities of bringing together a string quintet with harp, clarinet, and horn must limit the future life of the work, as moving as it was. It featured evocative and assured performances from harpist Sivan Magen and horn player Angela Cordell Bilger.

The bon-bon offered between these substantial and tragic vocal works was Dvořák's waltzes, two of the pieces from op. 54, arranged by the composer quite effectively for string quartet plus double bass, the latter played beautifully by Zachary Cohen. Both waltzes -- the first melancholy and pleasingly varied in rubato and the second overflowing with vitality and fun -- provided just the right diversion. As for that Mozart clarinet quintet, the always marvelous K. 581, it featured the best instrumental performance of the evening in clarinetist Sarah Beaty. John Adams, himself a clarinetist, wrote in his recent autobiography that the clarinet's technical enhancements have made it a relatively easy instrument for a competent person to play: be that as it may, Beaty had a consistent and pure tone, controlled and never forced, shaped immaculately into beautiful phrases. The second-movement Larghetto was exquisitely delicate, inwardly focused and the harmonic tension of the passages in suspensions not overdone, and the third movement's dances were charming. Extensive tuning of the string quartet's instruments at many breaks seemed to indicate that the evening's many intonation problems were due to the humid weather or the excessive air conditioning in the Freer's beautiful auditorium. (The group performed the same program at the Gardner Museum on Sunday, and the recording should appear on their podcast series eventually.) The concluding variations were gay and lively, crisply articulated, with a fun duel between the first violin and clarinet in the fourth variation and an exciting flourish of clarinet cadenza at the end of the penultimate variation.

The last two concerts of the Musicians from Marlboro series at the Freer Gallery of Art are scheduled for the spring (April 7 and May 5).

'Tis the Season for Postmodernism

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, New Juilliard Ensemble takes a chance
Washington Post, December 14, 2009

The New Juilliard Ensemble closed out the year of free concerts at the Freer Gallery of Art on Saturday night. The program consisted of 20th-century pieces incorporating chance principles, allowing the musicians to determine the form of the work according to the composer's guidelines. These talented students from the Juilliard School not only performed at the high level one would expect but also obviously relished exploring the boundaries between improvisation and composition opened up by this experimental music.

Perhaps too many Christmas concerts this month have warped my mind, but the program did seem to follow a familiar pattern, forming something like a Lessons and Carols service for postmodernism. Soprano Catherine Hancock opened with an unaccompanied piece by John Cage, "Eight Whiskus," almost chant-like in its austere solemnity. Henry Cowell's "26 Simultaneous Mosaics," with its emphasis on various kinds of metallic percussion, served as "Carol of the Bells." For those enamored of historically informed performance, Cage's "Music Walk" featured an actual dial-tuned transistor radio, a relic of a bygone era. [Continue reading]

New Juilliard Ensemble
Music of Cage, Cowell, and others
Freer Gallery of Art

DCist: Leipzig Quartet's Zen Moment

The best part of the program was saved for last, a rare performance of John Cage's Music for Four, an exercise in noise and tedium premiered by the Arditti Quartet at Wesleyan University (where else?) in the late 1980s. This aleatory work consists of four parts for the instruments of the string quartet, layered together at random intervals by the players, who are supposed to be separated from one another at some distance, to allow the audience to hear each part independently. The Leipzigers opted to set themselves up in the entrance to the museum's main floor, with cellist Matthias Moosdorf in the stairwell by the door, violist Ivo Bauer at the top of the stairs, and violinists Stefan Arzberger and Tilman Büning at opposing ends of the hallway. This decision was sprung on the series director, Michael Wilpers, only a couple hours before the concert, forcing him to arrange hastily for the extra security needed to make it happen.

The performers instructed the audience to move about the entire floor, to hear the music from different angles, and the resulting noise of shuffling feet, cameras clicking, and whispering became, in good Cagean tradition, part of the performance. The sound carried throughout the stone-floored exhibition space, allowing one to stroll about taking in the Freer's exquisite collection of Chinese landscapes of wandering philosophers, Japanese screens and guardian statues, Buddhist statues, calligraphy, and pottery, with the formless blocks of sound, streaked pen-like into the space and then vanishing, providing a sonic backdrop.

A Zen Evening at the Freer (DCist, March 12)


Violinist Tilman Büning, Freer Gallery of Art (photo by Neil Greentree), with Yours Truly at left, wearing scarf
UPDATE:
Joan Reinthaler, Sounds of Silence at the Freer (Washington Post, March 14)

Musicians from Marlboro

Vermont Festival's Southern Exposure
Washington Post, February 21, 2009

Musicians from Marlboro II
Augustin Hadelich and Karina Canellakis, violins; Sebastian Krunnies, viola; Peter Stumpf, cello; Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet
Freer Gallery of Art

Haydn, String Quartet in E-flat, op. 64, no. 6 (.PDF file)
The first movement's sonata-allegro form is more or less monothematic, with the first (m. 1) and second themes (m. 25) beginning alike. In the development (m. 46), Haydn turns to quasi-Baroque devices to develop the thematic idea, layering the instruments on top of one another, blending it with suspensions. Dicing up the little dotted-note tag from the end of the first theme, passed around among the instruments, he sets up a false recapitulation, bringing back the theme in the flat VI (m. 84). Swirling back through other keys, Haydn then prepares a big cadence on G major, as if he were going to recapitulate in C major, only to abruptly shift back to the home key (m. 98).

For some reason, the musicians in this performance treated the eighth notes in the rewrite, starting in m. 103, as dotted notes inégales. They also did something unusual in the third movement, lengthening it by making an additional repeat from m. 52 back to the beginning of the Trio, then repeating the Menuetto, and then performing the entire Trio and Menuetto again. These differences may be due to a different edition: I have not checked to see how the work appears in the Haydn-Institut Werke.

Kodály, Duo for Violin and Cello, op. 7
Brahms, Clarinet Quintet, op. 115

Shanghaied Into Beethoven

The Shanghai Quartet is an institution at the Freer/Sackler Gallery by now – and they are not only regular guests in Washington but also a chamber-music highlight of the season. The proved to be so much in the first movement of Barber’s String Quartet op.11, which has the tantalizing quality of keeping you on your toes, always apprehensive of what might come next – but always rewards with rich, unexpected beauty. On top of that it has plenty rhythmic drive. In short, the two-movement quartet – at least in the hands of the Shanghai Quartet – impressed far beyond what one might expect from a work that had the unfortunate fate of getting its slow movement culled and transmuted into the (usually saccharine) “Adagio for Strings”. Of the latter, any self-respecting ear will grow tired, soon. As part of the String Quartet, however, it (thankfully) takes on a “new” guise: Delicacy and haunting tones instead of the listener being smothered with syrup. (Even if you still think you’ve heard that work too many times, it’s worth it just for that first movement.) The short Molto Allegro (much of it rather slow, actually) of the second movement’s finale harks back to that first movement and ends with a nice kick to the Adagio-complacent ears.

The Shanghai Quartet on Ionarts: Shanghai Quartet and a Taste of China (April, 2005) Shanghaied at the Freer (May, 2006)

Just like the Shanghai Quartet’s appearances are a tradition at the Freer, so is their habit of programming one Chinese work and one Beethoven Quartet for the evening. This time it was Ge Gau-ru’ Four Studies of Peking Opera for String Quartet and Piano. The work contains sweeps on the first violin, aggressive, toneless pizzicatos on the second violin and cello, high pitch pizzicato chirping on viola, and the sound from the prepared and amplified piano (which rattled like someone had forgotten their knitting-needle collection in the bowels of the Steinway). And that was just the Prologue. The whole thing is so foreign to Western ears that nothing of it will be perceived as “classical” in style – (classical Chinese sounds though it approximates) but a slightly exotic mesh of sound and noise that reminds more of our own avant garde rather than cultural exchange.

After Ge Gau-ru’s work, Beethoven’s op.131 sounded very different than it usually does. The lean but sinew sound of the Shanghai Quartet can offer a lot with its lithe violins and viola (Weigang Li, Yi-Wen Jiang, Honggang Li, respectively) and the brazen, brutally sonorous, romantic sound of cellist Nicholas Tzavaras. But it is not an approach that seeks beauty of tone above everything else. The seven-movement behemoth that is Beethoven’s string quartet is full of music that takes time and exposure in order to appreciate its greatness. Performances like the Shanghai Quartet’s – even if a good bit south of perfection – are just the thing to get newcomers to the Beethoven truth and offer more seasoned ears some enjoyment, too.


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Shanghaied at the Freer

China Song Shanghai Quartet Delos M.Ravel/F.Bridge, String Quartets Shanghai Quartet Delos

Other Reviews: Daniel Ginsberg, Shanghai Quartet (Washington Post, April 28)

The Shanghai Quartet had been at the Freer Gallery before (Ionarts reviewed them last year), but I doubt they ever left as strong an impression as last Wednesday when they played Bartók’s first string quartet and the Ravel quartet in F major. The Bartók opens with the two violins playing the serioso part until cello and viola join in what is part fugue, part post-Wagnerian chromaticism. Counterpoint-heavy, there are plenty hints of resolution that the ears seek out, just without actually finding them. With the care the Shanghai Quartet players took rolling out their lines, executing them cleanly, aiming for passion through precise tension, there is beauty in that first movement not unlike in Berg’s Lyric Suite.

Soon enough, though, an earthier tone enters. Plenty rhythmic drive in later sections made the Lento excellent; the entire movement again being proof how much Bartók benefits from live performance. If the Shanghai Quartet was at times more ‘proper’ than fire-breathing, that didn’t mean that they could not or did not dig in deeply... as they did, for example, in the wilder Allegretto, bringing out the very best in every single musician. The clarity and sonority of every member’s tone, led by a great first violinist, repeatedly baffled. Dedication and precision abound, the mirthful Allegro vivace was quite simply (not exactly a technical term, but best describing it) awesome, ensuring that my favorite Bartók quartet is always the one I am hearing. (Lest anyone think that any Bartók performance can elicit similar feelings, it helps recalling the Calder Quartet’s performance from late January, showing that Bartók empathetically does not ‘play itself’.)

Ravel’s string quartet is a gem, and the audience’s appetite had been whetted for it. The beauty of the Shanghai Quartet’s playing produced first shimmering, flittering rapture, then a plucked chase, an ethereal stroll, a ferocious final argument. The group was not last year’s highlight of the Freer concert season but barring a ridiculously good Musicians from Marlboro III on May 9th, they certainly are going to be this year’s. The program started with Yi-Wen Jiang’s 2002 arrangements of Chinese songs. These perfectly pleasant works were light and on occasion bubbly appetizers – half East, half West. The Shanghai Quartet consists of Weigang Li (1st violin), Yi-Wen Jiang (2nd violin), Honggang Li (viola), and Nicholas Tzavaras.

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Shanghai Quartet and a Taste of China

Two Wednesdays ago (April 20), the Shanghai Quartet and huqin virtuoso Wang Guowei stopped by the Freer/Sackler Gallery to present a concert of Chinese repertoire and Brahms. Second violinist Yi-Wen Jiang arranged and recomposed several Chinese songs and traditional melodies for string quartet, and the result is his piece China Song from 2002. Since he emphasized and introduced Western elements to these songs, they sound more like a 19th-century faux-chinois quartet by a hopelessly melodic French composer. The recognizable Chinese melodic progressions and the wailing tone of the Chinese fiddle are always present, but only as shapes swimming in a sea of Western classical harmony. That's hardly a criticism—I don't know Chinese music well enough and can't say how much of the original was left anyway—but actually a compliment. Maybe it was like Chinese food in America: inauthentic but palatable. Every piece had a different flavor, and they all had a certain orchestral character about them. The third song ("A Busker's Little Tune") had me think of a possible music school assignment: compose a short string quartet movement on this (the "Busker's") tune, and do it in the style of Bartók.

L.v.Beethoven, String Quartetts opp.59 2 & 3 Shanghai Quartet Delos

After these songs, the quartet (who recently starred in the soundtrack of Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda) had convinced Wang Guowei to play a few solo works ("since he's here already..."). Both, the variation on a song and Listening to the Pine, a folk song by a famous street musician from the 1940s, were beautifully played on the huqin, the Chinese fiddle, which looks like a Coke can on a stick with a string and a bow playing it. While the former piece was more calm and melodic, the latter used the entire dynamic range of the instrument and was rather animated.

The 1997 Fiddle Suite for Huqin and String Quartet by Chen Yi showcases three different types of huqin, the instrument the Chinese adopted from the central Asian tribes and subsequently made their own. The work is best described in Mr. Chen's own words, lifted straight from Susan Halpern's program notes:

The first movement showcases the original sweet sound of the erhu (the timbre is like the human voice). The second movement is a realization of an eleventh-century poem by Su Shi, and the original Chinese characters of the poem are reprinted above the huqin melody in the score. It imitates the exaggerated reciting voice in Chinese operatic style, while the quartet plays mysterious textures to create the atmosphere, to express the parting sorrow in the poem. The third is influenced by a Beijing opera tune (the fiddle is screamingly high), while the strings sound like a percussion group. Its image came from the dancing ink on paper in Chinese calligraphy.

Needless to say, the suite was far more "Chinese" sounding than the China Song arrangements. The last movement's end, though, was as charged and fiery a finale as could be found in a DSCH symphony. Dedicated and polished playing only added to the splendor of the first half.

Brahms is a good way to measure the quality of a string quartet (the performers, not the work), since Brahms's quartets need to be performed impeccably and with plenty of gusto in order to convince. The A-Minor Quartet No. 2, op. 51, no. 2, is no exception. The complex polyphony of the first movement demands full concentration from the opening notes on. The many strands that Brahms spins into that Allegro non troppo are dazzling. To find direction amid all these impressions is difficult and if there is a common or thematic idea in it, I fail to find it. I still enjoy it, as I do the discernable, recurring melody that may serve as an anchor for the ears. The Andante moderato is dead-serious, as though "String Quartet" and fun were two polar opposites. The shadow of Beethoven was looming too large, still... and Brahms reacted differently to it than, say, Schubert, whose generally sunny attitude in his late quartets was not even impeded by syphilis.

Even if the finale has good moments, the Shanghai Quartet's adequate performance was not enough for me to warm up to it. A little bit like those works go a long way and should I happen to have a craving, the ABQ's first recording on EMI provides everything I could wish for. The second movement of Ravel's quartet was pure contrast after the somber Brahms. Pure joy next to lyricism: excitement coupled with mellifluous melody and all packed into a couple minutes made it the perfect encore.

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Musicians from Marlboro I — by Jens Laurson

Ionarts is happy to welcome new contributor Jens F. Laurson—formerly of Munich, Germany, and now of Washington, D.C.—who brings an interesting perspective on the state of music performance in our nation's capital. His first two reviews we are publishing are of concerts given in late November.

Marking the beginning of the "Musicians from Marlboro" series at the Freer Gallery, this program of Mozart, Ravel and Schumann chamber music, presented on November 18, was a good start.

Three young musicians came on stage to give a quaint and lovely rendition of Mozart’s Piano Trio K. 502 in B-flat major. Tai Murry on violin was convincing and left one in want of more—especially for music that might be more energetic—as the repertoire seemed to hold her back unduly, if ever so slightly. Cellist Peter Stumpf, by far the most mature player in the bunch, was superb and flawless, while pianist Anna Polonsky was exuberant in her expressions, although more physically than musically. While it may not have been a performance of a light piece that was especially memorable, it was well done and rightly well received.

The program picked up a notch or two when the Sonata for Violin and Cello by Maurice Ravel was presented. Peter Stumpf again on cello, almost fatherly in his support and energy, and Timothy Fain on violin. The latter, a young man of Joshua-Bellish good looks, played admirably, but seemed strangely stiff in a way that reminded me more (and unkindly) of Andre Rieu. The Sonata was new to my ears and betrayed influences of Bartok and, as pointed out by the informative program notes, Debussy. The lively finale had Mozartian elements in a technical exterior that evoked Bartok’s String Quartet #5. Faced with something visibly and audibly difficult to play, Mssrs. Fain and Stumpf had the audience captured with music that does not often command the full attention of the conservative Washington audience. Only in the pianissimo passages did the violin seem to have occasional weaknesses.

The Schumann Piano Quintet op.44 (E-flat major) was the concluding piece of the evening. And so the four incredibly talented musicians (I would guess them to be in their early 20s, the cellist being the exception) who had played so far were joined by equally talented Carrie Dennis on viola in this stalwart of the Romantic chamber music repertoire. Again, Peter Stumpf seemed the center of gravity, in what was "Hausmusik" of the highest order. Refreshingly brisk, not as cohesive as when a veteran string quartet form the body of the piece, but immensely gratifying thanks to the sheer musicality of the performers. The movement "Modo di una marcia" was perhaps the greatest challenge, and Mr. Fain’s breathing was oddly audible. But when the rapture of the music took over again, everything was back on track.

Perhaps this was a figment of my imagination, but some of the instruments did not seem as sonorous and well rounded as I would like. Noticeable, especially, in the lower registers. That a "circa mid-1700 Cigli Viola" should sound unsatisfying (even "boxy") to my amateur ears is difficult to believe. It might be interesting to speculate that I have been spoiled by the exposure to the instruments of the Juilliard String Quartet and their like at the well-equipped Library of Congress.

With a few days between the performance and my recollection, I’d sum up that while the Mozart was ever so nice and the Schumann spoke for itself, it was the Ravel that was most intriguing. Even when perfection of execution had perhaps been missed by some margin, the music had been well communicated and leaves me, for one, in search of a delectable performance on record—by tomorrow at the latest.