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CHAMBER MUSIC
September 12, 2004
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By Michelle Dulak Thomson
The Morrison Artists' Series at San Francisco State University kicked off in earnest Sunday afternoon with a recital by the
Alexander Quartet. It was a fitting start to the Fall run of a still-undervalued concert series. The Alexanders (who, of course,
teach at SF State) are the sort of quartet that would get deserved press coverage playing anywhere but their home town. Sunday's
concert at the McKenna Theatre saw the quartet further developing its distinct ensemble personality and further integrating its
relatively new leader.
Haydn's "Joke" Quartet, Op. 33/2, which opened the program, was something of a disappointment. The Alexanders pay a gratifying and
(for a modern-instrument quartet) sadly unusual amount of attention to Haydn, programming several of his quartets alongside
Mozart's in a running series this season, for example. But here, for whatever reason, the "Joke" fell a little flat. It was smooth
and polished playing (one or two technical mishaps apart), impeccably balanced and sonorous, but lacking the close, moment-to-moment byplay among parts that makes Haydn live. There were some finely-judged ensemble moments, but almost never a sense of one
player reacting to another player's gesture. It was all rather too glibly scripted to work.
The most successful things were the Scherzo's Trio, where Haydn directs the first violinist to use fingerings designed to produce
little portamenti or "slides" (It could have used even more of them, but first violinist Zakarias Grafilo at least wasn't shy about
them), and the finale, where Grafilo's incisive bow-arm gave a real kick to the rondo theme. He has a way of hitting the beginning
of a single stroke or a short slur that positively zings, and it was a real pleasure in fast movements in all three pieces Sunday.
 That movement, by the way, ends with the "Joke" of the piece's nickname. For those who don't know the piece: briefly, the simple eight-bar rondo theme appears at the end of the movement cut up into four two-bar snippets, with rests between them, stop-and- start. Then there's a yet longer rest, and then the first two bars again. And that's the end of the piece, but the listener doesn't know it's the end yet; the piece is set up so as to make you think that Haydn is just going to run through the rondo theme with yet longer gaps between the snippets. Only after nothing happens for several seconds does it dawn on you that the piece has been over for some time. On Sunday, someone up in the front of the hall, evidently anxious to prove that he "got it," let out a loud guffaw right after the last note, thereby (1) proving that he didn't actually "get it"; and (2) pretty much ensuring that no one else would either. I guess there really is such a thing as too much Music Appreciation. The somewhat deadpan style that seemed a liability in the Haydn lent itself a good deal better to Shostakovich's Fourth Quartet, which followed it. Indeed, "cool but biting" is a very convincing approach to a lot of Shostakovich, and so it was here, especially in places like the opening of the first movement (perfectly balanced, the slow crescendo beautifully judged) and the muted third- movement Scherzo. There were places (in the slow movement, in the "Jewish-theme" parts of the finale) where a little more raw-meat Romantic string tone wouldn't have come amiss, but the Alexanders' slightly distant approach generally worked well. I found myself admiring the piece more than I had for some time, noticing its concision and its deftness of design. A performance that makes you do that has done something seriously right.
As for the Ravel, it was another sit-up-and-take-notice performance, full of details that I don't remember having heard brought out before in a piece I've heard dozens of times. Those accents in the middle of the 5/4 bars just before the end of the finale, for example, in the cello and then the viola: why doesn't anyone else do them so you can hear them? A marvelous tussle between the violins and the lower strings over where the accents go, won by the latter, all right there in the score. There as in much of the piece it was the remarkable Alexander cellist, Sandy Wilson, who took the lead, with playing whose combination of solidity and bite and articulateness I doubt many quartet cellists today can match. Above him, I was most struck by the uncanny similarity in sound between Grafilo and the second violinist, Frederick Lifsitz. The first movement in particular involves a good deal of trading off between the violins, sometimes in bar or two-bar chunks, sometimes very rapidly. Here it was really seamless, as though the leading line were taken by a single player. Violist Paul Yarbrough brought a powerful and sensitively-modulated tone to the work's plentiful viola solos. His sound, and indeed the whole ensemble sound, was on the bright side for the piece's dreamier moments, (of course the McKenna acoustic can't exactly have helped this), but the fast music was brilliant, both that finale and the pizzicato scherzo, played with more verve and precision than I've heard it in a long time.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America,
and The New York Times.)
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