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CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
May 11, 2004
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By Charles Barber
American quartets often have trouble with French music. In their
hands it arrives precious, fussy, stillborn. Not so with the St.
Lawrence. Their performance of the Ravel Quartet in F Major (1902)
was by turns gleeful, sarcastic, utterly charming, fervent, and
intellectually demanding. The St Lawrence Quartet was born Canadian,
and long worked in the vitality of the Anglo-French culture which
lives parallel above the 49th. No wonder they do it so well.
In important sonic ways, violist Lesley Robertson held the
timbres together. Ravel's modal procedures, and hints of Moorish
mannerism, were greatly enhanced by her address. The whole work
alters between ferocious vigor and the channeling of spirits. Across
its four movements much territory is explored, and this ensemble
pushed into every hectare with its customary energy. A blitzkrieg
tremolo brought the work to a startling halt.
If only the Beethoven were equally successful. Op 127 (1823-24) is
one of the late proofs of total mastery. In remarkable ways it looks
to the old models. The first movement opens with a slow introduction,
and is then taken up Allegro into a formal exposition and
development. All of this is deeply familiar. However, Beethoven
interjects three Maestoso assaults into the form. There are also
more than two dozen appearances of a four-bar contrapuntal sequence.
Like a robber returning in disguise to the same bank, over and over,
its textures vary each time.
All of this was taken rather too fast, more an act of virtuosity than penetration into meaning. The counterpoint was given at one level, with no way to hear its operating machinery. With everything in the foreground, no line gained prominence beyond the obvious. This was particularly so in the work of cellist Christopher Costanza. A fine player, he nonetheless boomed away at one dynamic level. He is the newest member of the quartet, and it was this group's first appearance in the round drum which is the Gould Theatre. Even so, more care could have been taken. The second movement was, again, inaptly speedy. Adagio ("ma non troppo" to be sure — pace Brahms) is a hard tempo to find, and harder to sustain. Each voice, proceeding upward from the cello, enters with the same tied-note iteration. At this performance there was audible disagreement about pulse. Although politely expressed, it led to the final adoption of the fastest idea, as these polite quarrels usually do. It didn't work. That said, the five variations were wonderfully connected, and each enjoyed personality. The third movement, Scherzando vivace - presto, was the strongest of the lot, and ran with the brilliant gifts of this ensemble. The finale, Allegro con moto, was given with equal energy. Here, Beethoven's sonata form was allowed audible outline. Here, the regularity of its four-bar phrases lived in the air, neatly disturbed by articulate accent. All of this pounded toward the fantasy of its coda and to the galloping triplets of its close. Second violin Barry Shiffman was a superb leader of these rhythmic attacks.
Osvaldo Golijov's moving and difficult Yiddishbbuk from 1992 was the St. Lawrence at its best: argumentative, devoted, irreconcilable. This is an act of memory and reconstruction. Fragments of a lost work by Kafka, fragments of three children's lives lost to the Nazis at Terezinstadt, and the memory of two great Jewish artists now lost as well are the machinery of these inscriptions. First violinist Geoff Nuttall, in his opening remarks, talked about the privilege of preparing work with the composer present. His comments were well-given, but ultimately unnecessary. He and his colleagues showed everything in their stance, their fear, their exactness. The frantic off-beats (children running from their tormentors?), macabre dance figurations, grieving and spooked harmonics, and a very muscular finesse spoke — and screamed — its meaning. A shared horror and anger and desperation unified everyone in range of this tremendous music. Golijov's quartet, in a gesture perhaps inspired by Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, concludes in a brutal unison. So are the horrifying ways we become one.
(Charles Barber holds masters' and doctoral degrees in conducting from Stanford University, has served as assistant to Sir Charles Mackerras, and studied with Carlos Kleiber. He is author of the recently-published book, 'Lost in the Stars: The Forgotten Musical Life of Alexander Siloti', published by Rowman and Littlefield.)
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St. Lawrence Quartet