San Francisco Classical Voice

February 22, 1999

OK, these guys are good. Very good. We have come to expect a level of playing from the Tokyo Quartet that is, quite frankly, extraordinary. Not merely mortal in the pantheon of famous string quartets, the Tokyo Quartet is renowned for its highly polished performances. While some quartets, notable the Guarneri, create a unified sound by a blessed mixture of individual differences, the Tokyo Quartet has always struck one as a set of four matching voices, perfectly balanced and blended to create their extraordinary unanimity of sound and style.

Monday night at the lovely Herbst Theater in San Francisco was my first chance to hear the quartet's 'new' first violinist, Mikhail Kopelman. Only their third change in personnel in thirty years - all in the first violin position, Kopelman joined the group in 1996 after twenty years with the Borodin String Quartet. How will his Russian style and training fit into the exquisitely detailed ensemble of the Tokyo Quartet? If this concert was any indication, none too well.

Haydn's quartet in Eb Major, Op. 64, No. 6 gave Kopelman a chance to shine. A seldom played work from Haydn's "middle period"--he wrote over 80 string quartets!--it features the first violinist prominently. Kopelman's sound was much brighter than that of his colleagues, with a few rough edges that diminished the plummy sonorities of the quartet. A fine player, with a secure technique and obviously at home in the left hand corner seat of a string quartet, he seems not to have crossed the musical borders of this particular ensemble. Kikuei Ikeda, Kazuhide Isomura, and Sadao Harada played beautifully in their corners of the quartet. The sum, however, was not greater than the parts in a performance that was more urbane than witty.

Replacing the scheduled Sixth Quartet of Bela Bartok--alas!--were Anton Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 and Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade. Webern's delicate atonal miniatures play to the Tokyo's strengths: a perfection of ensemble, an extreme nuance of dynamics, a lithe sense of phrasing are called for and were delivered with seeming ease by the quartet.

Wolf's charming homage to Italy was less successful; a deliberate tempo and the quartet's patented "lush" sound contributed to making this performance sound tired and gray, instead of cheerful and breezy. The wrong end of a long Italian vacation perhaps.

Following intermission came Robert Schumann's String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41, No.1. Here, the quartet's dark, well-blended sound worked to their best advantage of the evening. Like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers and reclining in an over-stuffed armchair, one had only to sit back and enjoy this haunting and beautiful quartet. The scherzo was delivered with a refreshing amount of bite in the sound, and the lovely ensemble playing and impeccable intonation made this a performance to treasure.

Perhaps this very sense of being in an overstuffed armchair, of being bathed in sounds that, while beautiful and in tune and perfectly balanced, were not particularly engaging, was what had been bothering me all evening. The quartet's odd choice of an encore, the first movement from Shostakovitch's First String Quartet, epitomized the problem for me. Again, the quartet's sound was beautiful, in tune; but it was too beautiful, too smooth (one can never be too "in tune"!); there was no pain, no sadness in this performance. The highly polished surface of the quartet's reading only reflected the deeper emotions in the music without reaching them.

As a string quartet player, I can only marvel in what the Tokyo Quartet has accomplished. They have reached a level of artistry that is rare indeed, and I appreciate that an appearance on "Sesame Street" is listed in their biography along with a thousand other credits. Perhaps with a bit more time, Mr. Kopelman will find his way to that dark, sweet sound that so characterizes his colleagues in the quartet. But on Monday night, I can only say that their performance was gorgeous, and unsatisfying.

(Benjamin Simon, violist, has been a member of the Naumburg Award-winning New World String Quartet and the Stanford Quartet. He is currently on the faculties of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley)

©1999 Benjamin Simon, all rights reserved