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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
A Quartet Evolves from Unanimity to Independence
April 22, 2001
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By Keith Chapin
The Emerson Quartet has changed a good deal since it was formed. The four players' styles have become more distinct and their sounds more personal. If the group has lost the tightness of ensemble that was once its signature, it has gained in expressiveness and flexibility. In an anniversary concert on Sunday marking 20 years with the Stanford Lively Arts, the Quartet conversed as four independent voices, not as a homogeneous blend.
In Felix Mendelssohn's youthful and passionate String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13, the group successfully captured the 18-year-old composer's lyric gift and his debts to the dense textures of Bach and Beethoven. Each player brought his own palette of sounds, and the contrapuntal lines could be followed with ease. While it was a pleasure to see the commitment and thought the players gave individually, their approaches did not always match. Vibrato and portamento varied, with a cloudy texture as a result. While the performance was still powerful, the power lay in the energy and sure pacing of the group, not in timbral nuance.
Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings is well known in its orchestral adaptation, but the original version, which is a movement of Barber's Op. 11 string quartet, is seldom heard. The quartet is a sort of arch, with two nearly identical fast movements framing the celebrated Adagio. Since the fast movements work only as chamber music, it would have been a pleasure to hear the Emerson perform the whole work, but the Adagio was all we got.
The piece normally suits the sonorities and breadth of an orchestra best, but the Emerson achieved an intensity of timbre that did honor to the music. To the challenges of sonority, the Adagio adds problems of tempo. While a conductor can indulge in heavenly lengths, a quartet must match the pace to the intensity — or run out of bow. The Emerson resolved the problem by shifting tempos, speeding up regularly toward the ends of phrases. This built intensity but sacrificed some of the sublime serenity of the work. In the second half of the concert, the two violinists traded places, as is their custom. In the Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1, Eugene Drucker's concentrated tone suited the motivic weight and harmonic melancholy of Brahms's music. If the first movement began stiffly, the succeeding movements were successively more passionate. Emotional abandon sometimes brought slight faults of ensemble, but these if anything added to the performance. It was a performance on the edge, darkly wrought throughout. As an encore to the concert, the Quartet performed the "Allegretto pizzicato" of Bartók's Fourth String Quartet with humor. The four members of the Emerson Quartet allow themselves individual personalities in a way they did not ten years ago. If the performance lacked perfect polish at times, it was gripping and audacious. The Quartet contributes regularly to the exciting mix of young and mature chamber groups performing with the Stanford Lively Arts concert series. They do not rest on their laurels, so they will no doubt continue to change and to explore their repertoire with new artistry. (Keith Chapin is a violist and a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Stanford University.) ©2001 Keith Chapin, all rights reserved |
