San Francisco Classical Voice

February 6, 1999

The Juilliard Quartet, a fixture of American music life since its founding in 1946, was showing its age Saturday in Herbst Theater, performing quartets by Mendelssohn, Bartok and Smetana. It hasn't yet gotten over its change in leadership after the departure of Robert Mann, who shaped the Juilliard's musical ideas for 50 years as its first violinist.

His mantle as first violin has fallen on the shoulders of Joel Smirnoff, the last of a number of the Juilliard's second violinists. Ronald Copes is the new second violin, and the still-young old-timers Samuel Rhodes and Joel Krosnick fill out the viola and cello positions.

The program opened auspiciously. Mendelssohn's A minor Quartet, Op. 13, written by an 18 year-old, was given a first rate performance. The Bartok Fourth Quartet started superbly. This work was written in 1928 for the Pro Arte Quartet, who through recordings, number among my all-time favorites. The Allegro and Prestissimo were technically perfect and with the appropriate rhythmic tensions.

But the Bartok's third movement brought unhappiness. That movement rises or falls with the cellist. His opening soliloquy, over the two violin and viola supporting harmonies, lacked the requisite urgency and tension, two ingredients vital to the success of the movement and of the entire quartet. Krosnick seemed intent on counting out the exact rhythms that Bartok shows, but wonderful art uses arithmetic as a starting, not ending point. His left hand vibrato was wobbly, also hindering the urgency.

The pizzicato movement, again without technical problems for the Juilliard, seemed to be on automatic pilot, a condition that can cause the mind of the listener to leave the confines of the hall, despite the accuracy of the execution. The last movement was well played, but losing two out of five movements meant a minus mark for the total performance.

Smetana's famous E minor Quartet, "From My Life," suffered from predictability. Its tapestry is by now fairly threadbare, and any quartet wanting to take its measure had better think of a new departure for this music. The big viola solo at the outset did not please. Rhodes' tone was not pleasant and did not remotely suggest "the love of art in my youth, my romantic mood, the unspoken longing for something which I could not name or imagine clearly," as Smetana wrote in a letter about this quartet in 1878. Both the first violinist and violist were guilty of dropping the sound at the end of each of the outbursts in the music instead of finishing these moments with a crescendo.

The Polka movement had a nice lilt to it but it too suffered from a set-up of sameness and predictability. The slow movement was better, especially in the softer lyrical parts which generally throughout the concert made much more of an impression than the big, impassioned music. The detached-note runs in the final section sounded scrubby, perhaps because of the sound being forced in an acoustically dry hall.

The Juilliard is still a major force in the chamber music world, a quartet to be reckoned with, but losing a leader like Robert Mann means that the group will have to take stock, find a personality as a quartet and tighten up its technical shortcomings.

(Stuart Canin, is former Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony and of Hollywood film orchestras, and currently Music Director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra.)

©1999 Stuart Canin, all rights reserved