Welcome to the Dover Quartet

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

The winners of the Banff International String Quartet Competition, held every three years, have gone on to be some of our favorite new string quartets. The list includes the Daedalus Quartet (First Prize, 2001), the Jupiter Quartet (First Prize, 2004), the Ensō Quartet (second prize, 2004), and the Belcea Quartet (third place, 1998). Add to that list the Dover Quartet, which made a complete sweep of all the prizes at Banff this year. Naturally, I took the chance to hear the group, formed and trained at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, when they came to the area on Saturday night, at the Candlelight Concert Series in Columbia, Md.

One of the prizes that the Dover Quartet won at Banff was for best performance of a Haydn quartet, and their rendition of the composer's "Sunrise" quartet (B-flat major, op. 76, no. 4) showed why. The group gave the piece a warm, glowing sound, especially in the gorgeous slow movement, with no instrument ever forced toward stridency. The third movement had a lively and dancing feel, with the folk-influenced trio particularly vivid in its modal turns and drone-like textures. The fourth movement was witty but understated, with only a few sour turns in the high range of the first violin, for which more time to place high notes may have helped. Violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt stood out for her loamy sound every time she came to the fore.

The Dover Quartet concluded this concert with a tragic and bracing rendition of Shostakovich's third quartet (F major, op. 73), hands down the best Shostakovich performance by a young string quartet to reach these ears since the Jerusalem Quartet. It was again not an oversized sound, scaled appropriately to the room and its less than stellar acoustic. Pajaro-van de Stadt, in brief spoken comments, listed the programmatic titles that Shostakovich had initially assigned to this quartet's movements, and the group took the business of creating narrative scenes quite seriously. The carefree banality of the first movement was followed by the viola's menacing ostinato and the eggshell staccato waltz in the second movement, evoking layers of anxiety. Almost toneless, scratching clusters underpinned the first violin's frantic melody in the third movement, followed by another incendiary viola solo, leading to a shrieked conclusion that was chilling. The laments and tense funeral march of the fourth movement, all of it beautifully balanced in each pairing, with no instrument ever shouting over the others, led to the eternal questions of the fifth movement, which comes to rest on a major chord, over which the first violin continued its dissonant but sweet inquiries.

The middle of the concert was given to the world premiere of a new string quartet by American composer Eric Sessler. It was in a pretty, mostly tonal idiom, with many nice ideas, particularly in the elegiac second movement, and the Dovers gave it a better performance than it probably deserved. Sessler had some nice ideas but seemed to take them nowhere, chewing over some motifs over and over again. The piece could stand significant trimming, possibly the entire third movement, which struck me as too similar in quality to the second and started to wear thin not far into it. It is perhaps unfair to put this work in comparison with Haydn and Shostakovich, but that is the peril of composing string quartets. Even worse for this piece was comparison to the encore, the third movement of Beethoven's final quartet, op. 135, a light-filled performance like a hymn of peace to dispel Shostakovich's fog of war.

The Dover Quartet will be back in Washington next spring, for a concert at the Phillips Collection (March 23), to play a work for marimba and string quartet by Andy Akiho with percussionist Ian Rosenbaum.

In Brief: Hot October Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) Some of these streams become unavailable after a few days.

• Watch Christophe Rousset lead Les Talens Lyriques at the Festival d'Ambronay, performing settings of the Stabat Mater by Pergolesi and Tommaso Traetta, plus Leonardo Leo's Judica me Deus. [Medici.tv]


• From the Bayerische Staatsoper, the first of this season's live streams is today, Berg's Wozzeck with Simon Keenlyside and Angela Denoke, at 1 pm EDT. [Staatsoper TV]


• Puccini's greatest score, La Fanciulla del West, in a performance at the Wiener Staatsoper, starring Nina Stemme (Minnie) and Jonas Kaufmann and conducted by Franz Welser Möst. [ORF]


• Earlier this week, Esa-Pekka Salonen took the helm of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, leading performances of Beethoven's König Stephan Overture and Choral Fantasy, plus Luigi Dallapiccola's opera Il Prigioniero. [BR-Klassik]


• Hear the Pittsburgh Symphony Orcehstra on tour: Manfred Honeck leads Strauss's Ein Heldenleben and Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, with pianist Yuja Wang as soloist, recorded last month at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. [France Musique]


• Also from the Salle Pleyel last month, the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle perform Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, plus the Three Wozzeck Fragments, with soprano Barbara Hannigan. [France Musique]

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Osmo Vänskä Quits Minnesota

MPR State of the Arts reports from the Goodbye-Concert: Standing ovations, tears for Vanska as conductor begins waving his baton goodbye

He said for the encore he wanted to perform some Sibelius. He said the piece he chose is about a girl who dreams she is dancing with a young man. Then she realizes she’s not dreaming, and the man leading her in the dance is Death.

From Minnesota Public Radio: Live Broadcast: Osmo Vanska's Farewell Concert

[MPR is] seeking permission to rebroadcast/archive the audio from the live concert; as soon as they have approval from the interested parties, they will make its availability known.

From Michael Anthony at the MinnPost: Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra: He was the right man at the right time (October 2)

OpEd from Larry Perelman in the Star Tribune: The Minnesota Orchestra as we know it must die (October 2)

Musicians should follow Vanska's example and resign. It’s the only way the orchestra can be reborn. Here’s the model to follow.

From the New York Times: Vanska Quits Minnesota Orchestra as Labor Dispute Drags On (October 1)

Anne Midgette, A dark day: Minnesota Orchestra loses music director; NY City Opera declares bankruptcy (Washington Post, October 2)

Management and Orchestra have official responses to his departure - via CBS Minnesota.
The Musician's message is a bit bland, the message from Orchestra Board Chair Jon Campbell is a little dickish between the lines, and suggests a lack of true comprehension of what just happened.

Star Tribune article here: Conductor Osmo Vänskä quits Minnesota Orchestra

The orchestra's musicians and the board have now managed, with mutual incompetence, negligence, wilfull stupidity, and ignorance to doom the orchestra—among the country's very finest, most interesting for a moment—to lasting mediocrity that will unlikely ever be undone. At this point it's hard not to say: Well deserved! But it's also very sad to know their Sibelius Cycle won't be finished, nor their Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle with Yevgeni Sudbin.

More links, comments, and baseless speculations to follow.

Like the one that sees Osmo Vänskä now succeed Valery Gergiev with the LSO. He could form a cultural Little Finland in the British capital: Sakari Oramo and Esa-Pekka Salonen are already there.

Chris Steller tweets:

Seeing a lot of tweets out of Cleveland about Osmo Vanska leaving the MN Orchestra

— Chris Steller (@chris_steller) October 1, 2013

Osmo as MD of the Cleveland Orchestra? What a supremely tantalizing suggestion. They would be so lucky! But doesn't Franz Welser-Möst's contract run until 2048, anyway?

Dip Your Ears, No. 156 (Gergiev's Early Tchaikovsky Symphonies)

P.Tchaikovsky, Symphonies 1, 2, 3, V.Gergiev / LSO LSO Live 0710

Satisfying, Unsentimental

The LSO’s release of Tchaikovsky’s first three Symphonies—adding to Daniele Gatti’s Symphonies Four to Six with the Royal Philharmonic—means that the most satisfying 21^st century Tchaikovsky Symphony cycle might now be an all-London affair. Despite the catchy nicknames “Winter Daydreams”, “Little Russian”, and “Polish”, these inventive, vigorous symphonies haven’t caught on like their three saccharine successors. This set won’t challenge the Pathetique dominance, but it should make new converts. Instead of wading through sentimentalism, Gergiev puts on his riding boots—mud-crusted in the Third—which balances the energetically crude with the extant daintiness. The live recordings, two from the Barbican, one from Zurich’s Tonhalle, could be crisper (the new PentaTone recordings with Pletnev offer more on that count) but pack a real sonic punch if listened to very loud.

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

national symphony ORCHESTRA in World Premiere

With the superficial season-opening festivities out of the way, the National Symphony Orchestra opened its season properly with its first subscription program last night. Two good programming trends from Christoph Eschenbach's first three seasons continued into his first: presenting pieces for their NSO debuts, and playing new contemporary works. Here, a Haydn symphony never before played by the NSO was paired with a world premiere, followed unfortunately by something far too familiar, the Saint-Saëns "Organ-Symphony." Again.

The centerpiece of the evening was the world premiere of a new multimedia work by Roger Reynolds, george WASHINGTON, a sort of environmental soundtrack for a three-narrator text cobbled together from the letters and journals of the first American president. The commission came from the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, who specified the subject, with the NSO joining in the commission and providing the first performances. Reynolds tries to take the listener into Washington's world, with a harpsichord piece of the sort he liked to hear his step-granddaugher play, tracks of bird song and other noises recorded at Mount Vernon, and some video imagery of Washington's home, recorded through all four seasons, which was displayed on three large screens over the stage, each divided into panels as if one is looking through large-paned windows. The recorded sounds are sent around the room through surround-sound speakers, requiring the three actors to be amplified. It was a relief, at least, that a work by Reynolds was not grating or vexing, but it was one of the more dull and monotonous experiences, at over twenty minutes, in recent memory.

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Emerson Quartet: Tan, Rested, Ready?

Journeys, Emerson Quartet Beethoven, String Quartets, Emerson Quartet

A string quartet, especially one that has been around as long as the Emerson Quartet, operates according to a delicate chemistry. Change one part of the equation, as the Emerson did when cellist David Finckel left last season, and the balance will be upset. While the group's farewell concert last spring was an unforgettable moment in my listening life, the first time hearing the quartet's new formation, on the Fortas Chamber Music Concert series at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater on Wednesday night, was not exactly that. This is hardly a surprise, as it may take all or a large part of the season for the new cellist, Paul Watkins, to settle in comfortably.

Mendelssohn's F minor quartet, op. 80, revealed some of this discomfort, with some intonation issues heard from Watkins, as well as from Philip Setzer on first violin in the the concert's first half. Not that the experience was bad, as Mendelssohn's first movement was stirred up as it should be, but the second movement, not as fast as one might like, did not really build on that tension. Likewise, the third movement did not quite feel Adagio enough, which robbed the music of much of its tenderness, but this is not unusual for the Emersons, whose performances often sound a little overly clinical. Certainly the fourth-movement finale was a tour de force of steely technique all around. Watkins seemed to blend into the texture more than his predecessor, although at times he disappeared a little too much.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Revised Emerson plays with fresh vitality (Washington Post, October 4)

The most encouraging part of the evening was the middle piece, Benjamin Britten's third string quartet, op. 94. This was not because of the coincidence with the composer's anniversary year, which was nice, but because the Emersons have not yet recorded the composer's three string quartets, and on the basis of this performance, they will do that well. The tempos felt just right, with all of the parts featured beautifully in solo and duet moments, with the exception of some dicey moments high on the E string for Setzer. The Shostakovich-like qualities of the second and fourth movements, in particular, hit the group right in their wheelhouse, all growling energy and grotesque effects. Eugene Drucker was in the first violinist seat for the second half, devoted to Beethoven's ingenious C major quartet, op. 59/3, one of the "Razumovsky" quartets. Drucker's warmer, quieter sound set the tone for a performance that was turned inward, especially the gently rocking serenade of the second movement, not really a slow movement but with the pizzicato cello accompanying the singing of the upper three instruments. The third movement was bathed in honeyed tone, the warmest and most legato sound from the ensemble all evening, with a contrasting but not overly boisterous trio, and the concluding fugue was a marvel of speed and athleticism.

The Emerson Quartet's regular series, sponsored by the Smithsonian Resident Associates at the National Museum of Natural History, begins on November 3 (a program that includes Britten's second quartet). Hopefully, the shutdown of the Federal government, which has shuttered the Smithsonian Museums, will be resolved by then.

'Tristan': Thoughts on Fifth Performance

Wilhelm Schwinghammer (Marke) and cast in Tristan und Isolde, Washington National Opera, 2013 (photo by Scott Suchman)
This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

For some time, I have been trying to write a series of reviews that cover all of the performances of an opera production. It is a completely different way to assess a production, as opposed to basing one's opinion only on opening night. The requirements of such a project are many: it has to happen in a part of the season with fewer things to cover, clearing out your schedule; it should be an opera you will not grow to hate over the course of several performances; and many scheduling and other concerns have to line up so that the same person can be in the house over many performances, hopefully in a relatively short run. We almost accomplished this goal with last year's run of Bellini's Norma at Washington National Opera, covering four of six performances. The stars finally aligned this month, and we have managed to attend and write about all five performances of the company's production of Richard Wagner's glorious Tristan und Isolde. (See our previous thoughts on February 24, February 21, February 18, and February 15.)

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NSO Opens Fourth Season with Eschenbach

A gala performance, like the National Symphony Orchestra's annual Season Opening Ball concert, is often dangerously close to a pops concert. Christoph Eschenbach, at the start of his fourth season as the NSO's Music Director, has mostly avoided that pitfall in his first three seasons. His fourth season opener, heard on Sunday evening in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, veered dangerously close to that edge, especially in the second half, but remained an event just as much about the ears -- as well as a big social event that raised $1.3 million for the NSO. The smell of paint, a new coat of cream color that has lightened the room considerably, was still discernible, from work finished over the summer -- fortunately, as Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein joked in his post-intermission remarks, completed before the Federal government was shut down.

The NSO musicians were featured in a couple of blockbuster showpieces, neither of them performances with much to remember. Tchaikovsky's fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet is far from the sort of trivial overture often used to open such concerts, but with enough famous tunes to please a crowd. As required, the fast bits were thrilling, with climactic sweeps of sound, and Eschenbach kept the slow parts from wallowing in syrup. On the second half, Bizet's second suite from Carmen served much the same purpose, with the added benefit of featuring some principals in beautiful solos: especially trumpeter Steven Hendrickson, bold of tone in the Habanera and Toreador Song, a fine piccolo duet in the children's chorus from Act I, and concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef, surprisingly demure in Micaëla's aria from Act II.

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