San Francisco Classical Voice

The printed program for the Orion Quartet's Sunday recital at San Francisco State University's McKenna Theatre argued that the group combines "the elegance and intensity of the European and American traditions of quartet playing." That proved to be about half true. The "American intensity" was there, as you'd expect from a high-profile New York-based ensemble (the Orion is quartet-in-residence at Lincoln Center). The European elegance was harder to hear.

In two Beethoven quartets, the Orion was steely, humorless, and hard-driven. Op. 18, No. 1, which opened the program, featured Daniel Phillips as leader (Daniel and his brother Todd alternate as first and second violins in the quartet). His consistent over-projection might have been an attempt to cope with the daunting acoustic of the theater, but with the rest of the players following his lead it made for a pretty joyless performance.

Not that there wasn't same remarkable playing; the finale's cascading sextuplets were articulated with a machine-gun-like precision that was all the more impressive when two or three of the players combined in the roulades. (One of the Orion's undeniable strengths is the ease with which the top three players blend when they move in rhythmic unison; it sounds almost like a single super-instrument.) But it was the kind of performance that had one reaching instinctively for martial and mechanical metaphors, rather than, say, images of swirling wind or water, or indeed of human gesture. It was impressive, but rather cold.

Op. 59, No. 3, with Todd Phillips leading, was less forbidding; he has a more vocal taste in inflection than his brother, and he dared in places to play really quietly (a lead unfortunately not followed by his colleagues). And the third-movement Menuetto was graciously and rather beautifully played--that "European elegance," for once. But the final fugue, though once again lit by flashes of sheer ensemble virtuosity, was disappointingly crass.

Between the two Beethoven quartets came a chunk of a new quartet by Wynton Marsalis, written for the Orion and titled At the Octoroon Balls. (Violist Steve Tenenbom explained that, since the entire score is fifty minutes long, the Orion tours with only the last four of its seven movements. (The whole thing is available on their recent Sony recording.) The work is Marsalis' first for a string ensemble, but not (as Leon Wieseltier's notes to the recording would have it) the first music of its kind for string quartet; Bay Area listeners familiar with the Kronos Quartet would have recognized the terrain.

In fact, the Orion Quartet's hard, slightly metallic sound was not terribly distant from Kronos' trademark amplified wail. And here the gritty tone color seemed right. Marsalis asks the strings to take on all sorts of colors, from the very human (a preacher at a revival meeting; a slave leading fellow-slaves in call-and-response song; a funeral procession for a New Orleans jazzman) to the menacingly mechanical (in a movement--"Hellbound Highball"--depicting the mother of all train rides).

Anyone who has ever dangled a toy mouse in front of a cat, then snatched it away at the last minute, knows that after a certain number of iterations the cat will get tired of the game and no longer deign to pay attention. The first time "Hellbound Highball" pretended to end, only to start chugging again, was a spot-on contemporary version of one of music's older jokes (a favorite of Joseph Haydn). The next few times were still amusing, though progressively less so. But by about the tenth fake ending, I (at any rate) was getting mighty bored with that mouse.

Which is a shame, because "Hellbound Highball" was otherwise great fun, what with its screeches, its motoric rhythms peppered with small dislocations, its glissandi swooping up through the quartet and back down again. (It was fascinating to see the Morrison Artists' Series' rather elderly and conservative audience taking such evident pleasure in what was, in cold fact, pretty raucous and dissonant music; perhaps they could accept as onomatopoeia what would never fly as "pure music.") The actual ending, disappointingly, was just a fade-out (and not the only one among the four movements, either). It seemed a symptom of a larger problem that nagged at me all the way through the performance: what motivates the trajectory of the music? Why does this follow that? Why does this end here, not there? The music was crammed full of arresting textures and enticing sonorities, but it was hard to see how the pattern into which they fell was meant to be read.

The exception was the concluding movement, "Rampart Street Row House Rag," which had a decisive and fully convincing ending (even if it, like the others, seemed a little too long for its own good). Here was a recognizable rag, with all the standard formal and rhythmic equipment, and a catchy tune to boot, but liberally spiced with disconcerting extras. There were emphatic, unexpected pitches; all manner of rhythmic games; and wild, manic outbursts from each instrument that always sounded as though they would shatter the orderly progress of the rag, yet somehow made their way back to a suave reunion with the other players within the required two bars.

It's a piece that would make a brilliant encore for any enterprising string quartet. And here the Orion Quartet did itself proud, playing with a splendid, insouciant rhythmic swagger that stayed with me afterward.

(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