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CHAMBER MUSIC
Paradigms of Quartet Writing May 19, 2002
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By Blake Stevens
Without recourse to multimedia effects or exotic instrumentation, the recital Sunday afternoon by the Ives Quartet explored in more subtle ways the possibilities of the string quartet medium. By juxtaposing a quartet from the 1770's, one from the 1970's, and a set of jazz pieces by a contemporary composer, the Ives' recital proved to be an understated yet provocative colloquium on genre. The members of the quartet — violinists Robin Sharp and Susan Freier, violist Scott Woolweaver, and cellist Stephen Harrison — are clearly committed to sustaining the vitality of the medium, both through the verve of their playing and their programming choices.
The Ives' reading of the Haydn Quartet in C major, Op. 20 No. 2, was striking in its vigor and bright sound. The first movement could be taken in a more relaxed manner, yet the Ives' bolder conception was persuasive, particularly in setting off the delicious, chromatically-inflected dawdling before the appearance of the closing theme. An early example of the genre, this quartet seems to have one foot in the Baroque trio sonata and one in the Classical quartet. The earlier influence plays out in the contrapuntal textures of this movement and the finale, a dazzling fugue. Although this final fugue has four subjects, in the Ives' account that particular detail went largely by reputation, given their exhilarating, breathless tempo.
First violinist Robin Sharp was an eloquent soloist in the slow movement's cantabile. Like an operatic scena, this aria is prefaced by an extended tutti introduction of jagged, unison lines. The Ives' approach was bracing, yet the inconclusive ending of the movement should have linked more immediately to the Menuetto. The Menuetto itself could have been more delicate in its opening bars; it seems less like a dance at first than a hesitation before the dance has begun, wistful and not fully engaged.
After the Haydn, the Seven Jazz Pieces of Thomas Oboe Lee (b. 1945) served as a gentle reminder of the string quartet's early origins in the entertaining and often light-hearted divertimento. This set consists of three somewhat abstract episodes — movements one, three, and seven — with interspersed homages to particular jazz artists: Horace Silver ("Post-bop"), Bill Evans ("Jazz Waltz"), Antonio Carlos Jobim ("Bossa Nova"), and Jaco Pastorius ("Punk Funk"). The formal conception is interesting and there is ample variety in the surface idioms of the homage movements. The more-abstract movements comprise the barest materials — open fifths, leisurely dissonances, attenuated melodic lines — a kind of acoustic primordial soup. These episodes may be intended to blur the boundaries between frame (pre-concert warm up) and picture (the real thing). Each homage (the real thing) was also somewhat economical, if at times operating on a reduced budget. Often a short melodic impulse and a couple accompanying riffs were uncomfortably stretched into entire movements, which ended up sounding like repetitious epigrams. If the Haydn quartet, and later the Britten Third Quartet, may serve as working definitions of the string quartet idiom, however, this crossover work didn't fully follow through with its possibilities. In terms of textural and timbral variety as well as the intense, rapid dialogue so brilliantly exploited by Haydn, the writing here seemed comparatively tame. Like Seven Jazz Pieces, Benjamin Britten's Third Quartet (1976) suggests the outline of the older divertimento, yet lies at the opposite end of the divertimento's frivolous tone. Whether or not the references to the composer's opera Death in Venice are immediately recognized, the work is unmistakably haunted with the themes of wandering and death. The first movement, "Duets," hovers between fragments and continuities that become too powerful, overextending themselves and ending in fracture. The "Ostinato" movement that follows and the fourth, "Burlesque," were raw and splendidly manic in the Ives' hands. These are dance movements stripped to the bone, framing the third movement, "Solo," the emotional and structural center of the work. Here again Ms. Sharp was a compelling soloist. The solo violin seems most clearly to speak for Aschenbach, the lonely figure at the center of Death in Venice, at the close of the movement. As the accompanying voices outstrip the solo violin, the soloist is left as the lone voice in a lower range, in a beautiful and haunting isolation.
(Blake Stevens is a Ph.D student in Music History at Stanford University. A pianist and harpsichordist, his interests include the history of aesthetics and Baroque opera and instrumental music.) ©2002 Blake Stevens, all rights reserved |
