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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
November 19, 2004
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By David Bithell
The interpretation of contemporary chamber music often falls short of the standards set by traditional classical musicians. This is more often a question of performance practice than of performer quality – the interpretation of Mozart or Beethoven has had two hundred years to mature. A new work must create its own musical language as well as struggle to find appropriate modes of interpretation. One clear solution to this issue was given Friday night as the Del Sol String Quartet presented a concert of works by four Bay Area composers at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum. The quartet's well-rehearsed and fully committed performances achieved a genuine feeling of “ensemble” interpretation and presented new works by Keeril Makan, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Adams, and Lou Harrison with the naturalness of classics.
Clearly making a name for themselves as a fresh and vibrant voice for new music in the Bay Area, the ensemble is also rising into position as a premier string quartet. Young and energetic, adventurous and all the while convincing, the quartet, comprising Rick Shinozaki and Kate Stenberg on violins, Charlton Lee, viola, and Monica Scott, cello, has done much to support young composers and to expose little-performed contemporary music.
The most striking composition of the evening was the world premiere of Keeril Makan's Static Rising for string quartet and percussion, commissioned by the Quartet and performed with percussionist John Bartlit. In many ways Static Rising existed in a world of its own. Composed with clearly circumscribed conceptual goals, the work's intensity of focus and slow expansion over its single movement strongly contrasted with the multi-movement survey structure of the other works on the program. Extended string techniques, used by the other composers on the program largely as colorful filigree, were here central to the sonic language and essential to the formal design.
 The long opening section is a meditation on near silent “scratch” tones with bowed cymbals that blend the string gestures together and help to create an eerie wooden stasis. The Del Sol Quartet sounded great as the piece moved into its full-voiced squeals and a rhythmic and gestural expansion before ending in a static harmonic field – a sort of awakened recapitulation. In some ways, the beautiful intensity of Makan's Static Rising felt awkward, placed last on the program, and would have made for a rather unbalanced evening had not the quartet returned to play an encore of Jeremy Cohen's crowd-pleasing transcription of a piece by Astor Piazolla. Nonetheless, the intensity and adventure was welcome. Gabriela Lena Frank's Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout was given a very unified and fluid interpretation. The Quartet adeptly held the work's six movements together, turning the rather meandering formal shape of the piece (rightfully to be expected in a walkabout) into an excuse for showcasing a range of coloristic effects and general vitality. Sections of delicate clockwork rhythms and fiery textural explosions were realized with an idiomatic use of a wide range of string timbres and techniques — often imitating the instruments and styles of traditional Andean folk music. The resulting sounds had a surprising resonance vividly brought to life by Del Sol.
Lou Harrison's music is a “walkabout” of an even wider scope, freely drawing inspiration from and blending together music from diverse cultures and diverse eras. His String Quartet Set from 1979 looks back over the terrain of European medieval, renaissance, and early baroque music with a parting glance given to Europe's eastern edge — Turkey. The buoyancy of Harrison's modal writing was given an elegant and polished warmth by the quartet and articulated at times with percussive effects from the cello. With the feel of an early music consort, Del Sol's collective approach to details of phrasing and gestural shape was rewarding. This is most apparent in their treatment of accompanimental passages and background textures that are played with such great refinement and clarity of intention that some foreground melodies and solo passages get buried or even seem lackluster in comparison. The quartet's decision to perform standing (as they did, with the exception of the cello, throughout the concert) added to this early music feel and was a refreshing choice, opening the ethos of string quartet performance outward to connect and embrace the public. Somewhat similar in scope to the Harrison, John Adams' collection John's Book of Alleged Dances tries to impress with fanciful variety. The titles of the movements (e.g.“Alligator Escalator” and “Toot Nipple”) and Adams' light-hearted program notes reveal this whimsy but, unfortunately, the music isn't quite suited for the task. Often bogged down in notey-ness and formally stuck between a series of quirky miniatures and fully fleshed out musical ideas, the set of dances lack the needed clarity and good wit that lives in much of Adams' work. In all of the pieces, the performers communicated with an intuitive sense of musicality and a clear confidence in their ability to engage and excite their audiences. Above all, the Del Sol String Quartet's greatest ability is in their working together as a single adventurous musical mind.
(David Bithell is a composer/performer based in the East Bay whose work explores the connections between music, theater, and language. He is co-director of the sfSoundSeries.)
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