San Francisco Classical Voice

Both of the evening's string quartets, by Beethoven and Ruth Crawford Seeger, proved to be fascinating condensed narratives of their respective composers' stylistic transitions. Perched on the cusp of his early and middle periods, Beethoven's Op. 18, No. 6, is too tame to be Op. 59, too serious to be Haydn. Beginning with a terse, energetic first movement, the piece has a way of "coming out of its shell" as it progresses. I was especially impressed by the Juilliard's handling of vibrato during the second-movement Adagio (as well as at other points in the program) — the ghostly nonvibrato playing of the three lower strings setting the solo first violin into sharp relief.

But it is in the following Scherzo, with its "is it in two, or is it in three?" trickery, that we first begin to recognize Beethoven's fingerprint. Minuet has become Scherzo, the stately dance now a frantic grotesquerie. In the final movement (subtitled "La Malinconia"), Beethoven resorts to an expressive device he would return to often, that of beginning a fast movement with a slow and serious introduction. The "melancholy" to which Beethoven referred is the opening Adagio, whose gravity sets into motion, by way of contrast, the faster and more jovial music that follows. The "Malinconia" theme makes its appearance again toward the end, acting as a coiled spring that fires the coda onto its prestissimo conclusion. The stylistic and expressive trajectory of the work was conveyed with great clarity and expertise.

If the Beethoven Quartet seems to broaden its scope as it goes on, the String Quartet of Ruth Crawford Seeger (whose birth-centenary this is) seems to narrow into a sharper conceptual focus as it progresses. Composed in 1931, it is the most famous of Seeger's works, but best known for its slow third movement, in much the same way that Samuel Barber's String Quartet is known only for the Adagio. This is a shame, since the other movements offer plenty to intrigue the ear.

The opening Rubato assai opens in a haze of rhythmic complexity and is the least clear in conception, pitting slow, lyrical lines in counterpoint against faster, jagged, stumbling music. The haze begins to clear at the movement's end, the violist playing a series of passionate interjections over a static, decaying harmony. The second movement Leggiero follows without break, and received a particularly crisp reading here. Almost more of a scherzando duet, it pairs violins 1 and 2 and viola and cello, respectively, and has the pairs bouncing lines off one another, via hocket (that is, one player interjecting notes when another part rests).

The third-movement Andante, performed like this, well deserves its reputation. It is a beautiful work, radically reduced to nothing but a wave of sustained individual swelling lines, none cresting at the same time but all moving inextricably toward the same goal. The final Allegro possibile pits the first violin against the muted remainder of the quartet. It is a gruff palindrome, beginning and ending with a shout. The challenge here is to make the formal game explicit to the listener. The Juilliard Quartet did just that. They also gave it an edge and made it bark.

For the final work of the program, the Juilliard Quartet was joined onstage by pianist Warren Jones for a riveting performance of Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44. Already well known as a brilliant accompanist, Jones proved himself to be equally adept as a chamber musician, particularly with regard to the challenges of the Schumann, which requires its pianist to be team player one moment and concerto soloist the next. Jones switch-hit nicely, and the team as a whole played exceptionally — precise, expressive, and as one.

(Michael Fiday, a former instructor at West Chester and Temple Universities in Philadelphia, is a composer and a relatively recent transplant to the San Francisco Bay Area.)

©2001 Michael Fiday, all rights reserved