San Francisco Classical Voice

In one sense, we are living in the golden age of the string quartet; surely never before have there been so many accomplished, intelligent, professional quartets and so many opportunities to hear them, whether in concert or on record. But with so much polish has come distance, too. A certain congenial character that used to be half of the point of playing chamber music (ask any amateur quartet-player you meet) has sometimes been professionalized right out of it. The Jupiter Quartet's concert Friday evening at the Glenview Arts Center in Oakland captured a bit of that rare atmosphere.

There was about the whole evening something of the intimate feeling of a house concert. There were no printed programs (the pieces were introduced by the quartet's members), and the players casually mingled with the small audience before and after the performance. The surprising acoustic of the Glenview Arts Center, too, contributed to the private atmosphere. The space is clearly designed mainly for dance, and the large hardwood floor and mirrored wall looked like a recipe for clattery, over-live sound, but the small, curtain-bedecked stage from which the quartet played apparently tamed the echo. It was a fine chamber-music acoustic, warm and not in the least bathroom-like. (Bay Area chamber ensembles looking for a venue would do well to check into this space.)

The Jupiter Quartet, a young ensemble, formed just two years ago by four Bay Area freelance musicians, does not have the integrated ensemble sound one takes for granted in a full-time professional quartet. First violinist Michael Jones's tone is markedly different in character from his colleagues'. His is a clear, smallish sound with a fast and rather unvaried vibrato; his intonation was generally pure, his bowing fluent. The inner players, second violinist Andrew Davies and violist Stephen Levintow, are both assertive musical personalities with strong and sometimes brash sounds. At times they rather overwhelmed their leader. In the brilliant coda of the first movement of Beethoven's Harp Quartet, Op. 74, the virtuosic first violin figuration was nearly buried under the soaring, interlocking lines of second and viola. Paul Rhodes was the secure and dexterous cellist.

The performance of the Beethoven was in the main a pleasure to hear, always enthusiastic and occasionally touching. But it bore the unmistakable earmarks of a work in progress. Notoriously tricky spots were played with a degree of ensemble precision that didn't obtain elsewhere, as though they'd been singled out for special attention in rehearsal. And I was disturbed by the nonchalant playing of the "Harp's quietest passages. The Jupiter (and Jones especially) were capable of great eloquence at the grand climaxes, but the hushed music, particularly in the slow movement, often seemed perfunctory and bland.

After a break came a more daunting project: Janacek's second quartet, subtitled Intimate Letters. There are pre-war quartets that make, perhaps, more difficult intellectual demands on the players, but not many that are this taxing in purely physical and technical terms. There's the frantic and skittish figuration, the myriad shifts of tone and tempo, the cussedly awkward keys. There's the impossible violin writing, strenuous and stratospheric (it is hard to imagine it being played at all on a gut E string, though that was standard equipment when the piece was written). Then there are the gorgeously rich, double-stopped textures that turn instantly to vinegar at the slightest lapse of intonation. That the piece is nonetheless played so often is testament to the power of its peculiar blend of violence and ecstasy. Brave stuff--but also stuff for the brave.

The Jupiter Quartet took it on in a manner I can only describe as valiant. Ensemble and intonation may have been scattered to the winds occasionally, but the quartet never strayed far from Janacek's quirky and treacherous path. An outsize share of the credit ought to go to violist Levintow, for whom--to judge by his detailed and affectionate introduction to Janacek's life and works before the performance--this was clearly a labor of love. In the Beethoven, he had sounded powerful but sometimes crude (and came badly to grief in the "viola variation" of the finale). But here he had his part--and everyone else's--well in hand, and his strong, authoritative sound was the anchor of a gripping performance.

(Michelle Dulak is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times.)

©1999 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved