Middle Ages Crisis

From some of my recent posts, regular readers may have trouble keeping all of the arts festival celebrations in France this year (Springtime for Poets, Year of George Sand, Year of Salvador Dalí, to name a few). It also appears that there is some sort of theme related to the Middle Ages this year, as I learned from an article (Divines et terrestres, les musiques médiévales à La Villette, March 26) in Le Monde by Marie-Aude Roux. The subject is a new exhibit (Moyen Age, entre ordre et désordre, through June 27) at the Cité de la musique, in partnership with the Louvre: it covers 700 years of art and music, from the 9th to 15th centuries:

bringing together artworks from all over Europe, including manuscripts, illuminations, engravings, ivory pieces, including some treasures well known to fans of medieval melody like the Montpellier Codex, the Roman de Fauvel, and Guillaume de Machaut's Remède de Fortune. A feast for the eyes does not rule out the ears also being charmed: listening stations will allow you to pass from the abbess Hildegard of Bingen's chants to the polyphonic complexity of Guillaume Dufay, from liturgies to parodies, without even mentioning courtly love, which extols the inaccessible Lady, "gracious, good, and beautiful."

There is also a cycle of 14 concerts by medieval music ensembles, performing programs focused on spiritual music (March 26 to April 4) and on more worldly music (April 13 to 18). Remaining concerts include the Ensemble Faenza's performance of the Remède de Fortune on Tuesday night, a program called The City of Paris in the time of St. Louis by Discantus and Alla Francesca on Wednesday night, and Ensemble Gilles Binchois performing Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame on Friday night. In the second part, a group called Obsidienne will present Feast of Fools, Feast of the Donkey (April 13) and Joel Cohen's Boston Camerata will perform the Roman de Fauvel (April 14).

Other performances will include chants and dances from the Abbey of Monserrat (Ensemble Micrologus), early polyphony by Perotin and from Perugia (Huelgas Ensemble), harp music with singers (Sequentia), Chrétien de Troyes and the Conte du Graal (Diabolus in Musica), courtly lyric and music from Spain (Troubadours Art Ensemble), Holy Week in Jerusalem (Discantus), the Banquet du vœu of Philippe le Bon (Ensemble Gilles Binchois), Muslim, Jewish, and Christian music during the reign of Alfonso el Sabio (Hesperion XXI), and the poetry of Osama Ibn Al-Mounqidh (Ensemble Al-Kindî).

At the same time, there are the following related exhibits: Paris 1400: Les arts sous Charles VI (in English here; at the Louvre until July 12); Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry: l'enluminure en France au début du XVe siècle (from March 31 to August 2, at the Château de Chantilly and Musée Condé); Louis d'Orléans et Valentine Visconti: Mécénat et politque autour de 1400 (from June to September at the Château de Blois); L'art à la cour de Bourgogne: le mécénat de Philippe Le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur (from May 28 to September 13, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon); and Une fondation disparue de Jean de Berry: La Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges (late June to August 29, at the Salle du duc Jean in Bourges).

If it didn't mean losing my job and irritating my family, I would be on the plane to Paris tonight.

The Ionarts Proposal

The following proposal began as a series of quixotic remarks about American cultural life. We now present a more thoroughly formulated presentation of these ideas, for the consideration of our readers and hopefully for the politicians to whom it is addressed. Readers are requested and encouraged to voice their approval or disapproval for this proposal in the comments section (click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post).

To the Elected Officials of the United States Government:

As the most powerful nation on earth, it is scandalous that the United States should be impoverished in terms of its cultural life and heritage, by comparison with other industrialized nations. In many other countries, it is accepted that the importance of the arts to the citizenry demands that a government sponsor an entity at the national ministerial level, charged with the mission of fostering and preserving all facets of society's artistic and creative life. The list of countries in Europe that fund such a Ministry of Culture at the national level should cause us as Americans some embarrassment, where in recent years federal funding for cultural programs has been reduced from slim to meager. Of course, this list includes those states of western Europe which one might expect to support the arts, such as Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and the United Kingdom. However, it may be surprising to learn of more challenged countries in Europe where the government's commitment to the arts is no less devoted, such as Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Turkey. (For more information, see Cultural Policies in Europe, a compendium Web site from the Council of Europe.)

The evidence becomes more striking when we consider the countries worldwide that fund some sort of Ministry of Culture, sometimes in conjunction with another important policy area like Communication, Education, Sports, Youth, Tourism, and so on. From the list of such countries (Window to Culture) maintained by the Unesco Sector for Culture, it is clear that, in what we might label the "Cultural Arms Race," the United States lags behind such nations as Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Cuba, India, Jordan, Kazahkstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Oman, Ukraine, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Vietnam. Here in North America we are, in terms of government support of the arts, the poor cousin of both Canada (which has a Department of Canadian Heritage, which funds the Canada Council for the Arts and a number of other programs) and Mexico (which has a National Council for Culture and the Arts).

The United States government does spend money on sponsorship of the arts. According to the Americans for the Arts organization, estimates of federal funding of the arts are as follows:

Direct funding to our country's primary cultural agencies—the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute of Museum and Library Services—presently reaches nearly $250 million. Add to this the dollars that go to cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with about a dozen others, and the federal investment rises to almost a billion dollars. [Another estimated $1 billion dollars for arts-related projects is spent by the Departments of Education, Justice, HUD, Transportation, and Defense.]

Another list of arts-related funding in the federal government is maintained by the National Endowment for the Arts.

We propose the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Culture, which would collect together into one entity the existing arts and culture agencies of the federal government (and their budgets): the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. This new department would be charged with fostering and preserving the cultural life and heritage of the United States, including the support of appreciation of the history of the arts (museum-related programs, scholarship and research, and arts education in public schools) and funding for living creators of art, music, and literature. To make an appropriate fiduciary commitment to this mission, we also propose a special funding arrangement for the new Department of Culture.

At present, the United States military budget (approximately $399 billion for FY 2004, which President Bush wants to raise to $420 billion, according to his latest budget request, which does not even include most of the cost of the latest war in Iraq) is around five times greater than its closest competitor (Russia, approximately $65 billion) and over ten times greater than that of France (around $30 billion), for example. The military accounts for a staggering percentage of the overall federal budget, far out of proportion by comparison to other programs in the budget as well as by comparison to other countries of the world. Therefore, we also propose that the new Department of Culture receive an additional amount of funding (above and beyond the present funding levels for the agencies listed above) equal to a mere 1% of the American military budget, which at present levels would amount to approximately $4 billion.

Following a lengthy visit to the United States in 1831 to 1832, Alexis de Tocqueville, a government functionary from France, published a book about the United States called Democracy in America. In one chapter in that book (Vol. 2, Section 1, Chapter 9, The Example of the Americans Does Not Prove that a Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude and No Taste for Science, Literature, or Art), de Tocqueville tries to dispel the fear many Europeans had that, because the arts had fared so miserably in the United States, "if a democratic state of society and democratic institutions were ever to prevail over the whole earth, the human mind would gradually find its beacon lights grow dim, and men would relapse into a period of darkness." To fear democracy for this reason, he said, "is to mingle, unintentionally, what is democratic with what is only American." De Tocqueville envisioned a democratic society that would come naturally to a profound appreciation of the cultural life, when a society in which class divisions had ceased to exist would become conversant with the higher pleasures:

As soon as the multitude begins to take an interest in the labors of the mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is a powerful means of acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The restless ambition that equality begets instantly takes this direction, as it does all others. The number of those who cultivate science, letters, and the arts becomes immense.

This will not happen if we do not use the power of our wealth, represented in the federal budget, not only to build up the power to kill and dominate but also to cultivate our "taste for the pleasures of mind . . . so natural to the heart of civilized man," to use de Tocqueville's words. If our government does its part to present the joys of art, literature, and music by supporting them and making them available to all, then indeed, as he put it, "this intellectual craving, once felt, would very soon have been satisfied."

Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran

Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran (2003) Buy it from Amazon

The French film Monsieur Ibrahim is being billed as the "return" of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, although one glance at his filmography in the Internet Movie Database shows that he has certainly been working, just not in anything good. In an interview published on the film's Web site, Mr. Sharif is perfectly frank about the nature of his recent work. In response to the question, "Is it true that you did not want to make any more movies?", he replied:

Totally true. After my small role in the The Thirteenth Warrior with Antonio Banderas, I said to myself, "Let us stop this nonsense, these meal-tickets that we do because it pays well. Unless I find a stupendous film that I love. And that makes me want to leave home to do, I will stop." Bad pictures are very humiliating, I was really sick. It is terrifying to have to do the dialogue from bad scripts, to face a director who does not know what he is doing, in a film so bad that it is not even worth exploring.

Ouch. That movie was adapted from a Michael Crichton novel (Eaters of the Dead), which is bad enough. William Wisher and Warren Lewis, who are credited with writing the screenplay, should be ashamed. That clueless director whom Sharif courteously did not name would be, I think, John McTiernan, who has had his ups (The Thomas Crown Affair [1999], The Hunt for Red October [1990]) and a whole lot of downs (Last Action Hero [1993], Medicine Man [1992], Predator [1987]). Worst of all, his name is synonymous with the Die Hard franchise, the first installment of which, in 1988, was as tolerably entertaining as the third (Die Hard: With a Vengeance [1995]) was excruciating to watch. It looked like Thirteenth Warrior had finally spelt the end of an infamous career (practically no work in film since then, if you check his IMDb filmography). It was so bad that, according to IMDb, Michael Crichton did some uncredited reshoots on this film before it was finally released. Hollywood, however, never learns and, like the proverbial dog, is happy to lap up its own vomit if it sits on the floor for a few years: McTiernan has been tapped to direct Die Hard 4: Die Hardest, with Bruce Willis (which is wasting celluloid as we speak, in preparation for a release in summer 2005).

==>> Continue reading this review.

Todd Babcock takes exception: Alright, alright, ease up on The Thirteenth Warrior. Heart on sleeve here: I loved that movie. Seen it probably five or six times (twice in the theater, mind you). The dealing with the language crossover, where Banderas learns the Norse tongue through assimilation, where foreign words slowly intermingle with English, was a great conceit. I have not experienced that in film before and have noted it as an idea to steal for future projects (though I am sure McTiernan stole it from something else). The cast was stellar: sparse dialogue was replaced by behavior. You knew each character from one another simply by behavior and look. Film is pictures at the end of the day, and this film told its story through images and sound more than dialogue. The lead character of the King just stole the picture: his dignity and pride were evident in every frame by his natural presence on screen. The ballad they recited about their fathers and the oral tradition were powerful and Crichton's juxtaposition of an unlikely cross-cultural landscape was, I thought, interesting. The Arab/Muslim's use of writing and technology is not one we really discuss outside of academic history footnotes, certainly not in cinema. The ancestral worship vs. monotheism, for an action film. I don't know: I feel you're writing off a lot of what the film did, I guess. But, more to the point, McTiernan had the film taken away from him by Crichton: he (Crichton) didn't shoot more material but rather cut about an hour of footage. It was meant as this epic tale with all the extra footage being character stuff. After the film was eviscerated, the character were left as shadows and simple ideas of what they shot. Basically, Hollywood (and Crichton) don't want three-hour art films with action. They want their two-hour, above-the-title star action film to seep into theaters and make quick bank. The gutted film felt, well, gutted, and after an initial weekend bump of curiosity it was blasted by critics and the audiences soon followed suit. What the full film looked like, apparently, we will never know. Crichton is too powerful to overthrow (the pissing contest between director and writer went to the bestseller). McTiernan asked to have his name removed and, of course, they did not oblige because his name has cash value as well. I am also allergic to actors disavowing film choices in that 20/20 hindsight and claim "selling out." You made the film, you weren't hurting for money: it's not like Omar Sharif was trying to make a name for himself or was trying to pay off his car insurance. He has the luxury of choice. Take a note from the King of Candor, George Clooney: when queried about Batman and Robin, he simply stated that he had fun, it was a great opportunity, and that yes, the film didn't land, but he thought it was a great experience and let's face it, "who turns down Batman?" If a film tanks, the best tact is to say, "We tried our best. It was fun. Sorry you didn't like it."

The New Corcoran

It is not news that the Corcoran Gallery of Art (and College of Art and Design) wants to expand and has contracted with superstar architect Frank Gehry to create the new wing. However, you may not have gone to the museum's Web site to look at the images of what Gehry has proposed to build. It's curvilinear, it's titanium, it's dramatic, and the museum leadership is in the middle of a big campaign drive to pay for it, as well as other modifications to the facility. (I had not really given this much thought, but the Seward Johnson show that caused so much controversy may have been partially due to the institution's need to bring in some serious coin, which Johnson's show certainly did.) Looking at the pictures of the planned new wing and its shiny titanium, I had the thought that the perfect corporate sponsor is out there (folks from AOL have already pledged $30 million, so why not?). If Apple pledges the rest of the $120 million the museum says it needs, they could name the new wing the Powerbook Wing, and a corporate logo could be tastefully applied (as in the imagined version shown here).

New York in a Day

The line to get into the Whitney Biennial stretched out the door and around the block on my visit this past Wednesday. Luckily, I was there around 10:30 and got in after only a short wait. If you buy a $75 membership, you'll be whisked to the front of the line. Once inside, it's a happening. There's painting, sound, installation, and more lines to view videos. I've got to admit up front something I'm not proud of, and that is my lack of patience for video, be it this exhibit or in a gallery. I give it a few minutes, and if it doesn't click, I'm gone. What attracts me most is painting.

This biennial is a big vibrant funhouse on four floors. I started on the second floor and made my way up to the fourth, at a fairly quick pace, weaving and bopping around the crowd, and then retraced my steps on the way back down. Many of the artists I was already familiar with from the Chelsea galleries. As a whole I really enjoyed this biennial. As always, it's heavy on New York. That's expected, but there's a lot of good art being made outside of New York, too. There, I said it.

Some other interesting reviews of the Whitney Biennial: • Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker (March 22 issue) • Tyler Green's Five Favorites at Modern Art Notes (March 24) • Nathalie's Thoughts on the Whitney at Cup of Chicha (March 21) • Jerry Saltz (March 15) and Ed Halter (March 16) at the Village Voice • Blake Gopnik in the Washington Post (March 14)

What remained in my mind a day later are the same works already mentioned by other writers. Elizabeth Peyton's small painting gems, for one. Probably because of their small, quiet stature, they stand out in this boisterous show. In the same room are several David Hockney portraits, interiors, and landscapes in watercolor. (Hockney is also showing new drawings up the street at Richard Gray Gallery: Self Portrait In The Bathroom is great.) I spent most of my time in this room.

Some other work I liked were the painting/drawings on big canvases by Julie Mehretu, Lecia Dole-Recio's large abstract mixed media works on paper (a conservation challenge in the making), the imaginary landscapes of Robin O'Neil (I thought of Pieter Brueghel the Younger), and Erick Swenson's spooky albino deer installation. It's a feast for the senses: check out the Whitney artist list for images.

Also uptown, in addition to Hockney at Richard Gray, Helen Frankenthaler is showing some very nice large woodcuts at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries. Two pieces also exhibit the original woodblocks.

On 57th Street, Alexandre Gallery is showing four small (14 by 16 inches) landscapes by Lois Dodd, which were probably the most memorable paintings of the day. Snow, Wood, Flatbrookville, 1976 is one. Mary Ryan Gallery has new paintings by Michael Mazur, and Michael Rosenfeld has the largest Fairfield Porter painting I've ever seen in his office. Barbara Mathes Gallery has a beautiful exhibit of costumes and textiles from 10th- to 13th-century China. OK, I'm inspired: back to painting.

Mark Barry (www.markbarryportfolio.com) is an artist working in Baltimore.

Der Ring from New York

Even Beverly Sills has apparently given up on finding a new corporate sponsor for the Met Opera Broadcast (see post on November 15), since her taped appeal for contributions from listeners is now played before each broadcast. So, you had better find which radio station in your area plays the Met broadcast and start listening, because it will soon disappear.

You could do worse than listening to the broadcasts of the complete cycle of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, as I did this past Saturday, with the first opera of the tetralogy, Das Rheingold. Since the opera was performed, as it must be, without any pause or intermission, the broadcast began with an interview with conductor James Levine by Ara Guzelimian (instead of the usual intermission features). In the opera's famous opening scene, deep in the waters of the Rhine river, Wagner unfolds an immense, rolling E-flat major chord. In this sound, the three Rhinemaidens sing and play around the gold they are set to protect. They laughed wonderfully in this production, as did Richard Fink as Alberich, who produced one of the great evil laughs in operatic history, as he made off with the gold he has stolen.

The opening scene of Das Rheingold is one of the most promising starts to any opera, but the energy of that scene dissipates, as the exciting transition music leads us up from the river to the heights of Valhalla. For me, the driving power of some of Wagner's scenes is more than outweighed by those "long half-hours" of dreadful narration, such as the second scene of this opera. We learn that Valhalla is completed, that Fricka (the Cassandra of the gods) is worried about the fact that her husband, Wotan, has promised to pay the giants for building Valhalla with her sister, Freia, and so on. I always find myself about ready to doze off until the entry of the giants, Fasolt and Fafner, which was played in this performance at a deliberate tempo with blaring brass sounds. Two powerful Russian singers played the giants in the Met production, Evgenij Nikitin (Fasolt) and Sergei Koptchak (Fafner), and they were exciting to hear.

==>> Continue reading this review.

Tune in for the rest of the Ring cycle broadcasts: Die Walküre on April 3, Siegfried on April 17, and Götterdämmerung on April 23.

Verrocchio in Washington

The victory of David over Goliath (1 Kings [1 Samuel] 17) resonates with underdogs, which is why David, the teenager who took on a brutish man 6 cubits (9 feet) tall and won, became a hero of the Florentine republic. Numerous depictions were created in sculpture, painting, and other media in Florence over the centuries, of which those of Donatello (bronze, c. 1430), Michelangelo (marble, c. 1502), and Bernini (marble, 1623) are the most famous. A fourth famous statue of David, by Andrea di Michele Cione (known by the nickname Verrocchio, c. 1435–1488), was cast in bronze around 1466. About 47-1/4 inches tall, this statue is now in the collection of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, in Florence, but for the past several months it has made an unusual tour outside of Italy, for the first time since a trip to the United States in 1939 and 1940. It was on exhibit at the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta, Georgia, from November 18, 2003, to February 8, 2004 (their Web feature on the sculpture is remarkably well done and very informative: if it is kept online, I will assign it to my Humanities students next year); and it was at the National Gallery of Art here in Washington from February 13 to March 21, where I went to see it recently.

Verrocchio's sculpture shows David at his most boyish. Although his age is not specified in the Bible, when David offers to fight Goliath, Saul scoffs at the idea, saying: "Thou art not able to withstand this Philistine, nor to fight against him: for thou art but a boy, but he is a warrior from his youth" (verse 33). He was just a rough-and-tumble shepherd, who was proud of having saved sheep of his flock from a lion and a bear. With a blessing, "Saul clothed David with his garments, and put a helmet of brass upon his head, and armed him with a coat of mail. And David having girded his sword upon his armor, began to try if he could walk in armour: for he was not accustomed to it. And David said to Saul: I cannot go thus, for I am not used to it. And he laid them off" (verses 38–39). And that is how Verrocchio shows him, with a fine under-armor tunic and stockings, worthy of a king, but not the brass helmet or coat of mail. With a single stone from his sling, David "struck the Philistine in the forehead" (verse 49): the nasty gash in the head of this sculpture is in the center of the forehead. David uses Goliath's sword to cut his enemy's head from his body, puts his armor in his tent, takes his head to Jerusalem and even carries it in for his audience before Saul.

You may have read that the sculpture has been restored. At some point during or just after the creation of the sculpture, the head of Goliath was placed in between David's feet, so that it would fit on a smaller pedestal for its new location inside the Palazzo Vecchio (the Medici family sold it to the government of Florence). As seen in the image on the left, this is how Verrocchio's David has been viewed for over five centuries. It has now been restored to reflect the sculptor's original vision, shown in the image on the right, with the head of Goliath off to David's swordhand side. When you compare the two versions, what Verrocchio originally planned makes so much more sense than what we were used to seeing: why would someone strike that pose and hold his sword in that way with an opponent's head right between his legs? Now, if you stand and look David directly in the face, his body points your eye toward the severed head, the source of his proud but ultimately rather nonchalant pose. The other result of the restoration is the removal of years of black varnish (which really changed the overall tone of the sculpture) and grime from the surface of the statue, giving us a better idea of what Verrocchio intended. David's skin now has a different quality than the sheer under-armor garment he wears, and traces of gold-leaf gilding adorn the border of that garment as well as his hair.


Two things stood out in my mind as I stood in front of this statue. The first is just how small Verrocchio's imagining of David is: at just under 4 feet tall, about the size of a sixth-grader, and a small one at that. By contrast, Donatello's David is 5 feet tall (158 cm); Bernini's David (5.5 feet [170 cm]) is the height of an average man, bent over in athletic movement; and Michelangelo's David is immense, at 13.5 feet (410 cm) tall. Again, Verrocchio seems to be the closest to the Old Testament account, having created a diminutive figure ("but a boy," as Saul scoffs) who captures the whimsically confident tone of the Biblical David. This may also explain the bizarrely seraphic expression on the face of Verrocchio's David (image at left), so different from the icy prebattle stare of Michelangelo (second image from left) and the lip-biting exertion of Bernini's Baroque statue (second image from right). Verrocchio best captures the contradiction of the Biblical David, showing the diminutive stature and apparent lack of seriousness that hardly could have inspired confidence, juxtaposed with the evidence of the miraculous accomplishment, Goliath's head.

On a completely different note, could the attire of Verrocchio's David (see detail at right) have been the inspiration for Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl?

Let Them Do the Bar Talk

The Bartók Quartet, the umpteenth highlight of the National Gallery of Art's free concert series (2490th concert, March 21), looks like a string quartet should look. Four friendly, elder gentlemen—all in various combinations of sophistication and heftiness—entered the stage with their respective instruments. One of the instruments, in particular, is rather famous. In fact, it was almost daunting to sit within feet of one of the most famous violins—the "Hamma" Stradivarius from 1731, played by first violinist Péter Komlós. Its date of creation makes the violin, by a rough and cheeky estimate, almost as old as the four members of the quartet combined.

The program first featured Mozart's Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 458 ("The Hunt"). In Mozart you might expect a quartet from Budapest (formed in 1957, in the first six years playing as the Komlós Quartet) to play the quartet (itself 54 years younger than Mr. Komlós's violin) in a more European "Coffee House style"; that is, more Classically and less Romantically inclined than many American string quartets tend to play Haydn and Mozart. But, no, it was energetic, communicative, alive, almost driven; this was a very fine appearance, if perhaps a bit routine in a few moments of the Adagio. Of course, it helps that this quartet of Mozart's "Haydn Quartets" is one of the best Mozart ever wrote (next to the "Dissonance" quartet, K. 465, which was played by the Chilingirian Quartet at the Library of Congress; see Ionarts review on October 28). As always, the well-informed, well-written program notes by Elmer Booze were as helpful to me as they surely were to everyone else.

Added commentary by Charles Downey: This concert was my introduction to the Dvořák waltzes, and I will soon be acquiring a score of the piano version of these pieces as a result. In the two pieces that the quartet played, there was an air of Viennese lightheartedness (as in the "call to the dance" of the first violin in the fourth waltz), but also a measure of modern sound, particularly in the chromatic coloration of the first waltz. As the first half of the program lasted only about 45 minutes (and the whole concert only an hour and a half, with intermission: the guards were shooing us from the building by 8:30 pm), the Bartók Quartet could have played the other six of these waltzes, if I had had my way. The Stradivarius violin played in this concert, I agree, has a remarkably potent sound, especially in the high E string playing. This is at least partially responsible for the lush full sound for which the Bartók Quartet is often praised. The other members play what are described in the program as "the finest instruments of the eighteenth century," without any more detail. The extensive pizzicati played by Mr. Mezö on the cello part in the second movement (Andante con moto quasi allegretto) of the Beethoven were beautifully executed, too, graceful at times and raucously sforzando when needed. For me, this is the highlight of this quartet. Although it does not actually set any Russian folk melodies (like the first and second quartets in op. 59), this somber and almost gloomy Andante is an extraordinary look forward, in 1805 to 1806, to the enigmatic works of Beethoven's late period. Unfortunately, the blindingly fast contrapuntal final movement had a toe-tapping spectator in front of me furiously tapping like a metronome. At least he was listening to the music: his wife, seated next to him, read a magazine for the duration of the concert.

After Mozartian delight came jollity, courtesy of Dvořák. Two waltzes—Dvořák transcribed these two of eight solo piano pieces (op. 54) for string quartet—were the filler before the intermission. (The works stem from 1880 and—rough estimate again—are just about older than any one quartet member.) The Mozart had been so promising already, the Dvořák, too, made me miss the quartet's namesake's work on the musical menu. That Dvořák liked the two particular waltzes hardly surprises; they are much more than "just quaint" and suggest both a hint of Bohemian forest folksiness and Viennese salon spirit. Very enjoyable little filler, indeed. The Stradivarius, too, got to show the punch it packs without showing off. (Is it just my imagination or does it really soar more than other instruments?)

After intermission, it was the third of the "Rasumovsky" quartets (op. 59, no. 3, in C major) of Beethoven that promised much. It delivered. Indeed, it was astounding enough that it made me stop my usual scribbling and instead focus on the music. The first two movements (only the first long repeat was cut) took me in, especially. While the Beethoven quartets of op. 59 are not everyone's favorites, I have a big soft spot for them in my heart. (Probably because for years I carried the Végh Quartet's splendid recording of no. 2 and 3 on the Valois label around with me, while all the other Beethoven quartets languished in a box at home.) At any rate, the quartet, with a good number of similarities to op. 59, no. 2, was a tremendous joy. The Bartók Quartet played them with sophistication but involvement, with zest but dignity. Not so much "Heroic"—which is the other nickname for this quartet—but perhaps something akin to a 1920s "urban chic"? Mature versions, aged like good single malt, served straight up.

The audience rightly applauded with some enthusiasm the outstanding efforts of Messrs. Géza Hargitai (violin), Géza Németh (viola), László Mezö (cello), and, of course, Péter Komlós. Unfortunately, the audience stopped just shy of eliciting an encore from these gentlemen, which is a shame. Perhaps that would have, could have been the elusive Bartók? Even so, after the Takács Quartet's fabulous concert at the Freer Gallery, this was another cultural "home run" for Hungary, witnessed by Mme. Peják, the Hungarian Ambassador's wife. I am looking forward to more.

Recordings mentioned in this review available at Amazon:

Végh Quartet, Beethoven String Quartets, no. 8 and 9 (oop)	Bartók Quartet, Complete Beethoven String Quartets
Salomon String Quartet, The "Haydn" String Quartets	The Lindsay String Quartet, Dvořák Waltzes