San Francisco Classical Voice

The Bay area is known for its large reservoir of highly talented young musicians. But we also have mature musical treasures that deserve to be better known, both locally and nationally. The seasoned Aurora String Quartet is one of these. Founded in 1979, the quartet today consists of four members of the San Francisco Symphony - Sharon Grebanier and Chunming Mo Kobialka, violins, Gina Feinauer Cooper, viola, and Margaret Tait, cello. Their concert on Sunday afternoon at the Old First Church was a lovingly presented tribute to youth. Fittingly, it included a full length composition by a highly promising and very young local composer, Anthony Cheung.

Mendelssohn's Quartet in E flat, Op 12, written when he was only fourteen, is a revelation and deserves to be better known. It is not only full of charm, but is very skillfully crafted and has, at times, notable emotional depth. The good natured first movement is surprisingly complex. But the high point of the piece is the Adagio non troppo. The teenager Mendelssohn here reaches into an amazingly deep well of emotions. There are sweet tender yearnings, tinges of melancholy, and sunny serenity.

The Aurora Quartet presented it with a high degree of lyricism and tonal warmth in all the intruments. The third movement is a charming country dance whose lightly rustic qualities were brought out with just the right amount of accents. The final movement is a skillfully constructed Fugue with a great deal of vitality. In it the young composer appears to be happily showing off his musical skills. To do it justice requires precision ensemble work and excellent balance. Both were in evidence.

Anthony Cheung, now sixteen years old, is both a concert pianist and a composer with several compositions already to his credit. Like the Mendelssohn Op. 12, Cheung's String Quartet No 1 was begun when the composer was only thirteen and completed at fourteen. According to Cheung, the piece was written soon after his "discovery" of 20th century music. So what we heard was not the work of a daring young radical. Anthony Cheung is still looking for his own voice, and the String Quartet No. 1 is heavily indebted to the the great masters of this century, notably Bartok. But there is evidence of originality in many places in this piece, and let us not forget that at this same age Mozart himself was indebted to and even reworking the compositions of J.C. Bach.

The Sonata-form first movement is alternately lyrical and rythmically energetic. It is quite Bartokian, but without the Hungarian folk roots (one brief folksy interlude seemed a bit out of place). The second movement, premiered at this concert, is a brief, lively Scherzo with glissandi and a persistent little rhythm passed among the four instruments. The somber last movement is entitled Memories of a World at War (surely somewhat a misnomer since Cheung is much too young for World War II memories). It is built around a slow dirge which is repeated in several variants, interrupted by quicker sections. Special instrumental effects (harmonics, up and down glissandi, sul ponticello, etc. ) are put to skillful programmatic use describing the chaos and horrors of war.

There is again a large debt to Bartok, but the movement has coherence and makes an effective statement. The final non-vibrato note, representing death, made a strong impression. The members of the Aurora quartet put all their considerable skills into a highly polished presentation. It was truly a pleasure to hear, and this young composer is someone to be watched!

The program's second half offering was the String Quartet by Ravel who was all of twenty eight when he wrote it. A work of great beauty, one of my favorites, it received an elegant and refined reading, perhaps even too refined until the last movement. The ravishing melody of the Allegro Moderato - played unison between changing pairs of instruments, accompanied by shimmering tremolos - was pure magic. The outer sections of the Scherzo however lacked a certain fierce intensity that is also very much a part of Ravel. The gossamer textures of the impressionistic third movement were delicately played but did not quite coalesce into a unified whole. Intensity did appear in the final movement which brought the whole concert to an exciting and satisfying finish.

(Andrew Dienes is a 'cellist and professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Davis.)

©1998 Andrew Dienes, all rights reserved