concert reviews: two string quartets

[calimac]

I had two string quartet concerts in very short order this last weekend. Each had the same format: two Viennese classics and an American work composed very recently.

On Saturday evening, the Miro Quartet at le petit Trianon. They played Mozart's Hoffmeister and what seemed to me a pleasant but rather characterless rendition of Beethoven's Razumovsky No. 1. Their new work was very new, as they'd given the world premiere at Carmel the night before: Credo by Kevin Puts, whose orchestral music has been floating around the area in recent years. I liked Credo better. Asked to write a work of Americana, Puts, who despairs of the political situation, opted to be inspired by some of the little pleasantries of ordinary life, and brought his small-scale work to a satisfyingly consonant chorale-like conclusion.

Sunday afternoon, to Stanford for the resident St. Lawrence Quartet. The same Haydn quartet (Op. 54 No. 2) that they've done at every workshop of theirs I've heard over the last year, one of the late Beethoven monsters (Op. 132), and John's Book of Alleged Dances, an extremely silly (a word I distinguish from funny) and echt-minimalist work by John Adams, the guy who's supposed to be post-minimalist. vgqn came with, and got to see our torn-up lawn while picking me up. (It's even worse today.)

I was reviewing this one, and faced a problem in describing the sound: how much of the character that I heard was due to the acoustics? Dinky is a spotty auditorium acoustically, and back center where we were is a dull spot. When not assigned a seat I prefer to be somewhere else. Knowing the hall, and the group, I'm sure that the near-inaudibility of the violist was purely a result of spot acoustics. But was the hesitancy and reticence of the general style likewise only an acoustic effect? Maybe some of it was. But I went home and relistened to a recording of Op. 132, and I'm convinced that the sweetness and charm of the St. Lawrence in the second movement trio was all their own. There was nothing like it in the other group's recording. I'm pleased at coming up with the phrase that the St. Lawrence found the work's "inner Op. 18," though I did feel obliged to explain what that allusion meant.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Sounds like two pleasurable evenings even with shortcomings. I know what you mean about acoustic dead spots, they can be fascinating in and of themselves though not at the expense of the music one strains to hear aright. The "inner Op. 18," hmm, yes, the dance movements or moments in Beethoven's late quartets can be profoundly exuberant, fleet, combining perfection with a lightness of touch that only he can pull off, if only groups will take the time to discover it. (And I've found the reverse can be equally moving, in the right hands -- I mean of course those groups who can evoke the "inner Op. 132" in the Op. 18 quartets!)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're certainly right about that. It's almost obligatory for a good performance to find the seeds of later Beethoven in Op. 18. I'm fond of the Takacs Qt recording, rather vehement - it finds the inner Op. 59.

Much of the criticism of late Beethoven that I read finds the dance movements in the quartets rather puzzling, even embarrassing. I think they have their own charm and shouldn't be elided over. I was especially pleased at this performance finding that quality in the Andante interludes of the Op. 132 Adagio.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

In Symphone Hall in Birmingham (England, not Alabama*), the seats are designed so that an empty, upturned seat has the same acoustic mass as a human being. That way, the acoustics of the hall are the same whether it's full or empty.

*My father in law was once searching for cheap flights from Birmingham to Monterey, and was surprised to find that he could do it without changing. Then we realised that the journey the website had given him was from Birmingham, AL.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

One day some years ago, a lost monolingual German tourist was found wandering around downtown San Jose. It was only after a German-speaking local was found that it was established that her hotel reservations were for Costa Rica. Her travel agent had booked her flight to the wrong San Jose.