San Francisco Classical Voice

The Alexander String Quartet, resident at San Francisco State University, is well-known for its performances of the Beethoven and Bartok cycles. They've also established a solid reputation for championing works by living composers. Their premiere of Ross Bauer's String Quartet No. 3 at Stanford University on Friday was a clear demonstration of why their efforts have been so enthusiastically appreciated by Bay Area composers throughout the years.

Bauer, a member of the faculty at UC Davis and director of its Empyrean Ensemble, writes in a musical language that has much in common with the expressionism of composers like Arnold Schoenberg. In his new quartet, the animated rhetoric of the music — much of the time resembling an agitated musical conversation — is continually engaging. Bauer's skillfully crafted use of unisons and octave doublings throughout the first and the last of the three movements provides punctuation within the ongoing musical dialog.

Unison playing, on the other hand, is the major element of the central second movement. The piece has an attractive feeling of unity, largely because of the presence in the final movement of strong unison melody writing and rhythmic echoes of the second movement scherzo. Two passages in the work are especially striking. One occurs two-thirds through the first movement when closely spaced pianissimo chords are suddenly transformed into a strange, unusually colored tremolo cluster. The other is a passage of contrasting duets in the second movement, with the violins playing in the upper range and the viola and cello playing in quick, jagged rhythms. Much credit is due to Stanford Lively Arts for their role in commissioning and presenting this new work.

The program opened with Mozart's D Major Quartet, K. 575. Composed in 1789 for the King of Prussia, an accomplished amateur cellist, it features a cello part of unusual interest. The Alexander Quartet's cellist, Sandy Wilson, played these many prominent passages in a highly expressive, rich-toned manner. He often seemed to be the force behind the group's rhythmic energy and vigor in the more animated sections as well.

Especially enjoyable were the second and third movements, in which the quartet displayed an astonishing unanimity of phrasing and rubato and delighted us with the elegance of the minuet. Their exemplary sense of ensemble was especially evident in the minuet's trio, in which Wilson's cello solos alternated with responses played with an unexpected flexibility and expressivity by the other three players: Ge-Fang Yang and Frederick Lifsitz, violins, and Paul Yarbrough. A greater range of tone color extending to the sotto voce/pianissimo passages would contribute to their mastery of this music.

The quartet produced some of its most remarkable playing after intermission in the second of the Op. 59 "Razumovsky" Quartets of Beethoven. Attack and phrasing were coordinated with precision, and the interplay of musical expression between the quartet members was especially vital. Beethoven's music seemed to sensitize them to harmonic meanings and implications. The quartet's total involvement in the moment-to-moment drama of the final movement was a high point of the concert.

Their refined, lyrical approach to the scherzo, however, had the effect of downplaying Beethoven's slightly malicious sense of humor and the movement's rhythmically off-balance writing. Here again, cellist Wilson deserves much credit for supplying rhythmic drive and propulsion in the quicker tempi, playing, at times, almost as if possessed. A gracefully played encore (the "Alla danza tedesca" from Beethoven's Op. 130) was warmly appreciated by the audience.

It is admirable that a quartet as prominent as the Alexander is programming recently composed works side by side with established repertory pieces. It would be particularly fascinating to hear in that context one of the 20th century "classics," a work by Cage, Ligeti, or Takahashi or even the Carter 5th Quartet. How exciting it would be if they were to give us the Schoenberg-Webern-Berg cycle!

(Thomas Schultz is a pianist and a member of the faculty at Stanford University.)

©2000 Thomas Schultz, all rights reserved