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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
April 12, 2006
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Diversity in "New Complexity" By Aaron Einbond
Too bad that when the Quatuor Diotima came from France to play at Stanford
Wednesday evening, there were not people enough to fill the music department's
Campbell Recital Hall. If ticket sales matched technical ability and emotional
impact, they would have been playing at Herbst to a sold-out hall.
Nevertheless, the specialized audience may have had some of the keenest ears in
Bay Area, well-equipped to appreciate the subtlest timbral twists and turns
commanded by this extraordinary young ensemble.
As a sort of controlled experiment to demonstrate their capabilities, the quartet
began and ended the first half with 20th century classics by Anton Webern: the Six
Bagatelles, Op. 9 (1913), and the Five Pieces, Op. 5 (1909). But this was
Webern for the 21st century, with hypermodern contrasts of timbre and
dynamics. The group proved that they were playing at the limits of their
instruments' capabilities when the first violinist broke a string a few bars into the
Five Pieces. Of course some Viennese charm still came through, as in the
violinists' schmaltzy duet in the first movement of Op. 5, but mostly they
made the Webern sound as if it were Ferneyhough — or, better yet, Lachenmann.
The tremolos that open Number Four of the Five became almost pitchless colors, and barely
audible arpeggios drifted into white noise. The group's precise quietness may not
have convinced listeners that their reading was definitive, but it did make it worth
hearing.
A new quartet by James Dillon, written for the group and premiered last year, was
a reminder that the composers often grouped under the label “new complexity”
can sound quite different. Although Dillon and Stanford composition professor Brian Ferneyhough (to whom that label was first attached) are fellow British
natives, Dillon's jumbled modality and textural disjunction create a strikingly
different musical surface from Ferneyhough's. The group's technical mastery was perfectly adapted to
Dillon's piece, bringing about the abrupt changes in texture and tone color with
clockwork precision. Dillon pokes fun at the genre: The second movement's
scherzando dance rhythms and Bartók-like ostinati are each interrupted
abruptly. The third movement is a parody of expressivity, with melodramatic,
exaggerated vibrato and triads decadently decorated with trills. Diotima's
immense range of dynamics, sul ponticello, and sul tasto were
essential in bringing out the work's mannerism.
As the Quatuor Diotima framed the concert's first half with Webern, they chose two works of Ferneyhough to open and close the second. They began with the terse Adagissimo, a glimpse of Ferneyhough's imitative handling of material in microcosm. The violins twitter away as the viola and cello play relaxed lines, reminiscent of the texture of an isorhythmic motet. The concert concluded with an impassioned performance of the Second String Quartet (1980), one of Ferneyhough's most approachable works. In writing about his famously complex notation, Ferneyhough encourages the differences that result from different virtuoso performers' attempts to decode and follow the notation of the same piece. Therefore it should be no surprise that the Diotima players brought to bear their own characteristic sound and preoccupations. As in the other works on the program, they focused on sharp changes of timbre and ensemble sound to sculpt a larger sonic picture. The immaterial glissandi, a coloration of the silences from the work's opening, were set off dramatically against denser passages. These holes in the texture culminated in an eerily still section toward the end, played with hushed suspense by the ensemble. Perhaps this is one locus of the “absence at the center” of the work to which the program notes refer. Stuffed between the two Ferneyhough works was a recent string quartet by Jo”l-François Durand, Ferneyhough's former student, who was also present. Sparse and desolate, much of the quartet's playing was high on the fingerboard (molto sul tasto), producing a hollow sound like wood pipes. But the piece was slow to get going, and one wondered whether its stubborn bareness was worth the wait. According to the program notes, the work explores material from Beethoven's last quartet, Op. 135. Quotations from the Beethoven were barely apparent, but toward the end listeners could hear the viola and cello trying over and over again to get a fragment of the scherzo going, like starting a lawnmower. As with the Dillon, the Durand reminded how different composers associated with the “complexity” school can sound. But the program was united by the extreme difficulties the pieces present to any ensemble and the confident flair with which the Quatuor Diotima overcame them. With luck, there will more opportunities in the future to hear such groups in the Bay Area, and more listeners who will benefit.
(Aaron Einbond is a Ph.D. candidate in music composition at UC Berkeley.)
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