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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
Layers of Homage In a Quartet Recital
March 27, 2001
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By Jeff Rosenfeld
Could anything in the music world be more overtly postmodern than the Cypress Quartet's ongoing series "Call and Response"? The group programs a pair of string quartets and then commissions a new piece to accompany those works. In the case of Tuesday's concert at the Berkeley City Club, there was a piece inspired by a piece inspired by a piece. Fortunately, the triple layering of references was merely an intriguing intellectual sideshow to an engaging new work by Anna Weesner.
The Cypress Quartet had asked Weesner to shape a new work in response to Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet No. 2, Op. 13, and Ludwig van Beethoven's Quartet No. 15, Op. 132. That request was already fraught with implications, since Mendelssohn's work was consciously modeled on Beethoven's. Not only are both pieces in A minor and in four movements, but they also share structural devices, including a slow introduction and an impassioned solo violin recitative between the third and fourth movements. The 18-year-old Mendelssohn's homage was especially daring, given that Beethoven's late quartets were still new and enigmatic in 1827.
But there are also some obvious differences between the works that Weesner had to consider. Mendelssohn didn't go so far as to mimic Beethoven's lengthy central Adagio, which bears the highly personal subtitle "Holy Song of Thanksgiving from a Convalescent to the Divine, in the Lydian Mode." The later work doesn't plumb such spiritual depths. It seems closer to Beethoven's bold, confident middle quartets than to such introspective, ambiguous late creations as Op. 132. Mendelssohn's slow movement is more peaceful than Beethoven's, and he also quotes one of his own songs ("Question") to suggest a subtext of young love. Weesner rose to the challenge of this commission with a work that explores both the similarities and the differences between Mendelssohn and Beethoven without ever sounding like either. Weesner, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wisely sidestepped the obvious structural relationship between the two works, but not entirely. Her new String Quartet No. 2, which she informally subtitled "Flux," does not have four movements but instead has two parts: "Tender Restraint, Bright Fury" and "Impulse and Ardor." Yet that first title could easily have been used for the first movements of the Beethoven and Mendelssohn works, which begin with restraint before erupting in vigor.
The first part honors Beethoven on another level. Weesner said she was inspired by Beethoven's ability to take fragmentary melodic ideas and build huge edifices on them. This method defined the first part. Weesner's quartet opens with a set of simple, portentous intervals, just as the two A minor quartets do. And like Beethoven, Weesner builds melody from these intervals by developing their potential abstractly rather than by constructing naturally "singable" tunes. The continual return of the opening material in surprising guises made for rewarding listening. Part two, by contrast, seemed to parallel Mendelssohn's own strengths within a contemporary esthetic. Its shimmering textures perhaps refer to the trademark effervescence of Mendelssohn. In at least one passage, Weesner asks the players to disregard one another and continue without bar lines. The unmeasured music (still strictly in tempo) takes on a slight element of chance. The separate instruments grabbed my attention independently with staggered entrances. I was reminded particularly of a passage from the first movement of Mendelssohn's quartet, in which the instruments rapidly toss back and forth a dotted figure. Weesner shares with Mendelssohn an ability to make complex textures out of simple devices. Lightness ripples through the second part when Weesner deftly dissolves unity into a rich tapestry of soloists.
The Cypress Quartet played with tremendous beauty, and their performance of Weesner's score was convincing (they had premiered the work in an identical program at Yerba Buena the previous night). I wish they had been able to save more energy for the Beethoven after intermission. In that work their sound lacked the necessary transparency to go with the intensity: I had trouble hearing the viola and second violin at times. But the Mendelssohn, which opened the concert, was a special performance, with luminous solo playing from first violin Cecily Ward. Weesner told the audience that she wanted her work to be "emotionally believable." That was never in doubt in any of the works, thanks to some very committed playing. For all the convoluted self-referencing inherent in the program, the three pieces spoke plainly and successfully on their own terms. (Jeff Rosenfeld is an oboist with the Kensington Symphony, West County Winds, and Pacific Wind Ensemble. He is a freelance science journalist and author of the recent book, Eye of the Storm: Inside the World's Deadliest Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards.) ©2001 Jeff Rosenfeld, all rights reserved |