how to hear a new quartet
Apr. 7th, 2009 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSometimes a piece of new music can leave an impression of bewilderment as to what it was doing in this concert, sandwiched between older (and greater) pieces, or an even greater sense of bewilderment as to what it was doing being played at all.
I had higher hopes for the new string quartet by John Adams, because I've always found his work interesting. Adams is sometimes called a postminimalist; what this means, if anything, is that he doesn't follow minimalist practice, but has taken the minimalists' ideas, particularly the idea of small compact repeating cells that slowly evolve, and put them in his toolbox. The toolbox is a good metaphor. In person, Adams looks a bit like a wiry old carpenter, and he constructs his music like a virtuoso with the hammer and saw, scrambling over the surface of his compositions, adding new joints and spiky bits to make works that are raw and unpainted, but are neat to peer around at and figure out how they fit together.
That pretty much describes this quartet, and despite the especially wide temporal range of Sunday's concert - an early Haydn from the very birth of the form, the Adams from the summer of last year, and a Dvořák from smack-dab halfway between them - everything seemed to fit and belong together.
Here's three views of the concert:
The Mercury News, being descriptive;
Me, being analytical;
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
voidampersand, being emotionally responsive. (Probably the best reaction.)
P.S. #1: For once, the press kit was useful. I got the quote from Adams's interview from there, and also the information on the work's commissioning and planned recording.
P.S. #2: If you ever wonder what the composer is doing an hour before the local premiere of his new work, he's out in the parking lot, leaning on the door of his car, reading a thick book.
I had higher hopes for the new string quartet by John Adams, because I've always found his work interesting. Adams is sometimes called a postminimalist; what this means, if anything, is that he doesn't follow minimalist practice, but has taken the minimalists' ideas, particularly the idea of small compact repeating cells that slowly evolve, and put them in his toolbox. The toolbox is a good metaphor. In person, Adams looks a bit like a wiry old carpenter, and he constructs his music like a virtuoso with the hammer and saw, scrambling over the surface of his compositions, adding new joints and spiky bits to make works that are raw and unpainted, but are neat to peer around at and figure out how they fit together.
That pretty much describes this quartet, and despite the especially wide temporal range of Sunday's concert - an early Haydn from the very birth of the form, the Adams from the summer of last year, and a Dvořák from smack-dab halfway between them - everything seemed to fit and belong together.
Here's three views of the concert:
The Mercury News, being descriptive;
Me, being analytical;
voidampersand, being emotionally responsive. (Probably the best reaction.)P.S. #1: For once, the press kit was useful. I got the quote from Adams's interview from there, and also the information on the work's commissioning and planned recording.
P.S. #2: If you ever wonder what the composer is doing an hour before the local premiere of his new work, he's out in the parking lot, leaning on the door of his car, reading a thick book.
