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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
November 14, 2003
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By Scott MacClelland
Ahead of its Herbst Theatre appearance last Sunday, the Skampa String Quartet and baritone Christópheren Nomura previewed that program Friday at Sunset Center in Carmel. (The Herbst performance was slated to close with a Dvorák quartet; the Carmel ended with Smetana's Quartet in E Minor.)
While the ultimate test of a young string quartet (Skampa was founded in 1989 at the Prague Academy) lies in the standard repertoire — those works made famous by the best quartets of every generation — the inclusion of a premiere carries its own appeal. In this case, it was Czech-born Sylvie Bodorova's Terezin Ghetto Requiem that would arouse a particular curiosity. Terezin, a few miles downriver from Prague, exerts a certain horror on the inhabitants of the region — especially in the Czech Republic — since the German Nazis practiced a peculiarly cynical brand of atrocities there in the 1940s. Bodorova's work is only the latest echo of that time which was so well documented by Terezin-survivor Josef Bor in his novelization, The Terezin Requiem. (Bor's book was published in 1963 when Bodorova was nine years old.)
The composer displays a deft and subtle hand in the three-section, seventeen-minute work that layers Hebrew and Latin texts with synagogue chants and quotes from Verdi's Messa da Requiem. Just before the end of World War II, the Verdi was actually performed by the Terezin inmates under the direction of Raphael Schächter, who, like the majority of its participants, did not survive the death camps. Bodorova's piece was written for Skampa who, for these performances, engaged the talented Nomura to express the meditative texts.
Bodorova's technique includes juxtaposing the Hebrew prayer Shma Ysroel with a quote from Verdi's “Lacrymosa” in canon, as just one example among many other enriching details. While the work develops moments of agitation in the strings, its overall character is contemplative and circumspect told in mostly tonal terms. In that regard, it bears a resemblance to Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (No. 3, of 1976.) Skampa opened their program with Barber's Quartet in D in a smoothly-played reading but one whose famous adagio was argued more than felt. Prokofiev's Quartet No. 1, Opus 50 got its best playing in the second movement's vivace, but overall the work needed more bite and sharper contrasts of pace and dynamics, those elements of “attitude” that figure so prominently in the composer's personality and oeuvre. The Smetana would have benefited from more vivid contrasts as well. Others have made a case that the autobiographical work contains more sorrow and anguish than it got from this warmly gracious go, even though a suitable helplessness accompanied the final pages after the ringing high E that heralded the composer's slide into deafness.
The Carmel appearance was sponsored by Chamber Music Monterey Bay, one of several classical presenters (including the Monterey Symphony and Carmel Music Society) that have chosen not to use the Lexicon Acoustic Reinforcement and Enhancement System (LARES) installed during the two-year renovation of Sunset Theater at a cost of something north of $300,000. The natural acoustics of the hall now project a brightly efficient but hard-edged sound quality in a noticeably dry ambiance. This especially afflicts the strings. (The Monterey Symphony has deployed sound-absorbing curtains along the walls of the auditorium in an attempt to take the edge off.) LARES was supposed to provide settings that would extend the fade time and make other accommodations depending on the performing complement. But the minimal fade time set by the LARES technician last summer (ahead of the inaugurating Carmel Bach Festival) was felt by most observers to be too long; the 700-seat Sunset sounded like a much larger space, creating a contradiction between what the eye sees and what the ear hears. Meanwhile, the room, by itself, seemed to boost part of the Skampa strings' overtones and suppress others, resulting in an unflattering tone quality. Until the LARES rep returns for fuller trials — with all users and their adjudicators on hand — each presenter is left to experiment on its own with less than the full complement of promised options available.
(Scott MacClelland, since 1978, has written music criticism and journalism for all the major newspapers on the Monterey Peninsula, and for the Metro papers in Santa Cruz and San Jose. During the same period, he has taught music history for Monterey Peninsula College.)
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Skampa String Quartet
Christòpheren Nomura
Sylvie Bodorova