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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
April 2, 2006
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Czechxellence By Janos Gereben
What do they know in Prague about San Francisco's N Judah streetcar, or about French neoromanticism? If the Czechs in question are the Skampa Quartet, and the event under discussion is the ensemble's San Francisco Performances concert Sunday evening, the answer is that they know all there is to know in order to trip the light fantastic.
We'll get back to the N Judah, the line going from downtown all the way out to Ocean Beach, in a minute. But first, it's time to speak of the evening's crowning glory, a Ravel to treasure. The four youngish musicians — who named their group after their mentor, Milan Skampa, of the Smetana Quartet — gave Ravel's only string quartet, the 1903 F Major, a hushed, warm, velvety, and sensuous performance that lit up the dark hall, which was surrounded by yet another nasty storm. As Noah's Ark was foundering somewhere out there, Ravel got his splendid due within.
Serious and all-business first violinist Pavel Fischer, brilliantly coalescing second violinist Jana Lukasova, ever supportive and kindly violist Radim Sedmidubsky, and heroic cellist Lukas Polack (playing through a daunting head cold) were obviously well matched, with much experience, but what they brought to the Ravel was more than the expected. There was an undemonstrative, invisible — but easily audible — torrent of emotion in the performance, all on an even keel, without peaks and valleys, melodrama or histrionics. There was nothing abrupt or excessive, just an inexorable flow of beautiful sound.
In its approach to the music, the Skampa demonstrated a knowledge of the piece superior to the composer's — perhaps an eyebrow-raising statement, but true. Ravel indicated très — "very" — for three of the four movements: très doux, très rythmé, and très lent, with the finale marked vif et agité. And yet, the Skampa's loving treatment eschewed "very soft," "very rhythmic," "very slow," and "lively and agitated." They played the music softly, rhythmically, slowly, in a consistently vibrant, but not an agitated manner. It is possible to imagine another interpretation, one closer to the composer's markings, but not a more accomplished, integrated, grand whole of a performance. The program opened with Mozart's String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589, classic, pure, and probably the most difficult work of the evening. From the opening bars, there was an appealing, buoying sense of purity in the performance, with even, consistent tempi, the four handling Mozart's surprising turns and unexpected "outbursts" with effortless excellence.
The first of five selections from John Adams' John's Book of Alleged Dances is called "Judah to Ocean." The composer recalls days of his youth spent in a cottage near the beach, "behind the Surf Theater" (one of San Francisco's more than 30 neighborhood theaters now empty or demolished), with the sound of the streetcar on Judah bouncing off the walls. The percussive tape (produced on a prepared piano) leads into the music, then slips into the background, just as the sounds of passing trains tend to do when heard every day. Skampa's French-perfect string players here became echt-American direct and robust. If you closed your eyes, you might not have known if it were the Czech musicians playing, or the Kronos (the San Franciscans, whose headquarters is just a block away from Judah, for whom the music was composed). "Toot Nipple," "Pavane: She's So Fine," "Rag the Bone," and "Standchen: the Little Serenade" marched by, Adams' modified-minimalist ostinato often turning into fleeting or heavy syncopation. The Skampa stayed on top of the music, with the same kind of knowing consistency they showed in the Ravel. The "alleged" in the title comes from the composer's belief that "the steps for (these dances are) yet to be invented." Adams admits that as these dances "cuss, chaw, hock hooeys, scratch, and talk too loud," they are, "so I'm told, hard to play." Hard, nothing; some of it is just impossible. The Skampa made it look — and sound — easy.
(Janos Gereben is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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