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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
March 27, 2006
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The British Have Arrived By Heuwell Tircuit
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble's devotion to neglected music found its forum Sunday evening in the Green Room of the Veterans Building with three string quartet compositions. Although listed as a salute to English music, "The British Have Arrived," the program really consisted of music by two British composers, plus one of Haydn's late masterpieces. They opened with Haydn's Quartet Op. 76, No. 2 in D Minor, the "Fifths' Quartet" (1797), followed by Thomas Adès' Arcadiana (1994). Following intermission, there was the Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 (1941) of Benjamin Britten. Players included violinists Anna Presler and Phyllis Kamrin, violist Kurt Rohde, and cellist Leighton Fong, able musicians all.
Britten's First Quartet is as much an American work as British, perhaps more so. It was written during his American sojourn, in Escondido, California, in fact, at the request of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the wet-nurse to chamber music in modern America. Written during June and July, the new quartet had a quick premiere that September in Los Angeles. The Op. 25, however, is only Britten's first published quartet. There exists an early quartet from 1931 and a shorter Quartettino from 1930, plus a fistful of short individual pieces. Britten was clearly prepared to take on this demanding medium at full stride, which he did.
The four-movement Op. 25 brims with fresh ideas and almost casual mastery of craftsmanship. The opening introduction, for example, is devoted to high, soft ethereal sounds from the three top voices against plucked cello tones. That's memorable, and indeed returns during the course of the first movement. There follows a pixie scherzo and an elevated slow movement featuring all the seriousness of the late Beethoven quartets in its ability to sound noble while utterly free of sentimentality. Only the finale lets down a bit. While in bravura toccata style, the melodic and textural materials seem retrograde to the music Britten had composed 10 years before. It has occured to me to wonder if that might have been brought on by a deadline problem, but who knows.
Haydn's set of six quartets were written on commission from Count Joseph Erdödy shortly after returning from his second London visit, and indeed they are often referred to collectively as the Erdödy Quartets. That set contains several of Haydn's most cherished quartets: the "Rider," "Emperor" (whose slow movement became the Austrian National Anthem), the "Sunrise," and this second "Fifths' Quartet." As so often, the Haydn nicknames spring from one movement or event among his works. In the case of this D Minor Quartet, it's the melodic interval of a fifth which occurs so prominently during the first movement that's guilty. Isn't it odd that a whole work should be named after so trivial a matter? Dramatic much of the time, the music must have surprised many listeners when new. The harmonic shifts are frequent and often unexpected, the textures sometimes woven in tight contrapuntal cross relationships, while the rhythmic patterns are often daring. That's why the rather aggressive third movement is sometimes known as the "Witches' Minuet." Naturally, we're not confronting Berlioz or Mussorgsky spook music, but in historical context it must have seemed a tad threatening to Haydn's contemporaries, most of whom doubtlessly expected an elegantly lyrical Haydn piece. Some of that does turn up, especially in the lovely D-major rondo of the second movement, with its utterly magical coda. But after the witches' music, there's that big storm-and-stress finale back in the minor mode, brimming with dramatic tension. The piece is not often programmed these days, although clearly influenced much later music, not least Beethoven's and Schubert's. Had Haydn written nothing more than the Erdödy Quartets he would still have to be ranked among the great masters. As it was, he took a medium originally intended for semiamateurs at home into the large halls by demanding virtuosity of the individual as well as the collective body of musicians.
Thomas Adès draws a lot of buzz these days, especially in England. He writes in a style somewhere between the late works of Berg and Britten, with hints of Penderecki's proclivity for smashed textures. Sounds deliberately seem a bit out of sync, which creates a dreamlike effect. The combination of elements is at least individual, drawing a little from this, a tad from that, which is common to most composers. Arcadiana consisted of seven short movements played without pause. Each reflects some piece by another composer, although I seriously doubt many listeners would notice the references. The opening Venezia notturna shows tiny glimpses of the Berg Violin Concerto, to me at least, the next Das klinget so herrlich more clearly belongs to Papageno's song in Mozart's Magic Flute. And so on and so forth through Schubert, Elgar, and so on. Some of the movements are seriously tonal, most are not. Interesting, I found the final Lethe uneventfully slow and disappointingly weak. Perhaps Adès should carefully study Haydn's many superb codas. Performances were excellent throughout the concert. A minor slip here and there, but the performers are human. But the feeling for style and general dedication left nothing more to be desired. Following the Haydn, first violinist Presler spoke to the audience, thanking us for coming in such weather, but she need not have bothered. There was only a mild drizzle when I left home, and leaving the Veteran's Building the sky had had the temerity to clear, save for only a wisp of cloud to be seen here and there. Weather? Bah!
(Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer, who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan, and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for the Chicago American and the Asahi Evening News.)
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