San Francisco Classical Voice

If a single gesture could express the tensions and ambitions of an entire program, a radiant passage in Schumann's Piano Quintet seemed to make that statement in the Muir Quartet's recital at Dinkelspiel Auditorium last Wednesday. At the close of the slow movement — a funeral march both somber and at turns ironic — a major chord emerges in the strings' harmonics, as fragile a sound as you could imagine, and disappears just as quickly. First-violinist Peter Zazofsky sustained the highest note as if it held the possibility of transcendence. Here, for a moment, the sheer physical intensity of the Muir's performance was transformed into a perfect lightness.

Zazofsky seemed to search for such moments throughout the program, which opened with the Mozart String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589 and continued with Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 4 in E Minor, op. 44 no. 2. Long-breathed melodic lines, such as the opening of the first movement and the principal theme of the Andante of the Mendelssohn, stood out for their eloquence and concentration. While capable of an astonishing range of colors, Zazofsky proved most compelling in his ability to control these extended lines. At such points he himself stood out, leaning toward the audience with his violin raised in the air, as if it had suddenly become buoyant with melody.

In contrast, violist Steven Ansell directed himself toward the center of the quartet, often bent over his instrument. With the first violinist's instrument suspended in the air, Ansell and the other musicians — violinist Lucia Lin and cellist Michael Reynolds — got on with the more earthbound business of providing well-balanced accompaniments. In more-conversational and less-soloistic textures, the quartet performed with precision and, for the most part, a common spirit.

The Muir Quartet works hard, and this work is audible, placing those moments of sustained lyricism and weightlessness in greater relief. This struggle is not quite technical — the quartet's technique is in most respects brilliant — but is more fundamentally physical and emotional. The players often communicate the intensity of the music as a series of personally-felt shocks, and perhaps for this reason they do not always seem to be working together. The effect in the final movement of the Mendelssohn quartet, a motoric presto agitato, was that of four intense readers each grappling with their individual parts. While the finale was breathtaking, this level of intensity seemed misplaced in the scherzo. Here, even the lightest bow strokes felt tense, as if a mischievous romp were being held back by leaden feet.

The Muir's account of the Mendelssohn quartet, curiously enough, clarified in retrospect their earlier reading of the Mozart B-flat Major Quartet. The players had worked throughout the Mozart to find the kind of song-like expressiveness that naturally arose in the opening bars of the Mendelssohn. If the Muir had read Mozart through the lens of the later work, the result was an impassioned opening movement, perhaps not as articulate or as poised in its rhetoric as it could have been, while the third-movement minuet — almost as forceful as the Mendelssohn scherzo — seemed little inclined to dance.

For the second half of the program, pianist Michele Levin joined the ensemble in the Schumann Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44. She proved herself an exemplary chamber partner, just as the Schumann Quintet is an exemplary member of that rare species of chamber music for piano that doesn't behave like a repressed concerto. That said, Levin could have given more sparkle and definition to the virtuosic passagework, in particular the repeated descending octaves in the scherzo. Such moments, however, were rare, and compensated for by the prevailing warmth and richness of her tone.

The ensemble deserves special praise for their engaging characterizations of the various episodes of the second movement. The central statement of the march had an unexpected dignity, while its subsequent repetition, over pizzicato accompaniment in the strings, was suddenly ironic and suggested that in the midst of this funeral march other characters might be conducting a melancholy burlesque. In this context that final, luminous chord — which so absorbed Zazofsky's attention — seemed less a transformation into spirit than these characters making a shrewd exit.

(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