concert reviews: two string quartets
Oct. 16th, 2007 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI 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.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
