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reactions to the record, day 2
Apr. 7th, 2014 11:20 pmWell, that was one of the strangest things that I have ever heard.
Like the piano rolls discussed on Friday, Saturday's symposium stars, the Ironwood Ensemble, came all the way from Australia; their purpose, to show us their Brahms.
Talks and a workshop demonstration of how they interpreted the score of the Piano Quartet Op. 25 weren't enough to prepare me for what they'd do that evening the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. Though it wasn’t what would actually have been heard in Brahms’s salon, it did engage with that style. To listeners used to the typical modern crisp, fast, rattling performances of this piece, it was a real startler.
For one thing, it proceeded with great deliberateness, as if the purpose of the performance was to communicate the meaning of each note, rather than to reach the end with a blaze. This meant, too, that certain sequences, especially tags at the ends of phrases, were marked by notable ritards. Combined with all the energy that would go into a more skimming performance, this meant that it sounded slow, a lot slower than it actually was, as if the music were tromping determinedly through thick mud. That took some getting used to.
All the string players used gut strings, as would have been regular practice when the work was new. This too made the sound darker and more deliberate. It also meant that, even as the string players tromped through the mud together, and shared their ritards together, they also all went out of tune together. Each movement was followed by an extensive retuning session, something 19th-century audiences were undoubtably used to.
Wilson plunged into period performing style more fervently than his string colleagues. His extreme restriction on vibrato and his frequent use of portamento slides between notes brought his tone at times quite close to the sound preserved on early recordings of Brahms’s favorite violinist, Joseph Joachim. Joachim sounds like adenoidal insectoid whining to modern ears. Apparently, though, it’s what was admired in the 19th century.
Violist Nicole Forsyth burst out with some gut-wrenching moaning solos. In general, hers and the other inner lines were easy to hear as separate voices, bringing out some details not usually audible in this work. Second violinist Rachael Beesley and cellist Daniel Yeadon did not venture quite so far into period style.
Combine Wilson’s portamento with de Costa’s frequently arpeggiated chords at the piano – not the grand, ostentatious rolling affected by modern pianists when the score instructs it, this just made the chords feel slightly crunchy – and the relaxed and easy violin-piano pairing sometimes resembled the casual strumming of a ukulele. That is not a comparison that has ever come to my mind with Brahms before.
By Sunday, the symposium was over, but I had another concert to review: an all-Beethoven program in San Jose by the Auryn Quartet. This was the first time I prepared for a Beethoven quartet concert review as I would for a Beethoven symphony review: by doing no preparation whatever. Partly lack of time, but the degree that my knowledge of these quartets has deepened over the decade I've been reviewing performances is large enough that I figure I know them by now as well as I'm going to.
The happy face on the cellist during the Op. 18 was rendered slightly weirder for me by the fact that, inperson though not in photographs, the cellist bears a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. Eventually deciding that the other three were Sam Neill, John Goodman (younger and thinner), and Rutger Hauer, I called it a night.
What should I have on Monday, though not for review, but another string quartet concert, this one from a group called the Vogler Quartet, also German, consisting of three ordinary-looking stocky guys of medium height and an impressively tall, sepulchral cellist, who looked as if he should either be answering doorbells by saying "You rang?" or else stalking down castle corridors with creaking knees, muttering about how long he'd served the Earl of Groan.
Their vigorous style and rigid ensemble made them the perfect group to match Schubert's Quartetsatz and Beethoven's Op. 18/3 with the First Quartet of Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech Jewish modernist (and Holocaust victim) whose music has the same sense of adventurousness as Bartok's without crawling out nearly so far on a limb. If only the first violin hadn't been almost consistently slightly out of tune with the rest of them, it would have been very fine.
The Schubert Rosamunde Quartet that followed was better in tune, but this quartet is so relaxed and peaceful that these dramatic players sounded as if they'd been stifled.
Like the piano rolls discussed on Friday, Saturday's symposium stars, the Ironwood Ensemble, came all the way from Australia; their purpose, to show us their Brahms.
Talks and a workshop demonstration of how they interpreted the score of the Piano Quartet Op. 25 weren't enough to prepare me for what they'd do that evening the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. Though it wasn’t what would actually have been heard in Brahms’s salon, it did engage with that style. To listeners used to the typical modern crisp, fast, rattling performances of this piece, it was a real startler.
For one thing, it proceeded with great deliberateness, as if the purpose of the performance was to communicate the meaning of each note, rather than to reach the end with a blaze. This meant, too, that certain sequences, especially tags at the ends of phrases, were marked by notable ritards. Combined with all the energy that would go into a more skimming performance, this meant that it sounded slow, a lot slower than it actually was, as if the music were tromping determinedly through thick mud. That took some getting used to.
All the string players used gut strings, as would have been regular practice when the work was new. This too made the sound darker and more deliberate. It also meant that, even as the string players tromped through the mud together, and shared their ritards together, they also all went out of tune together. Each movement was followed by an extensive retuning session, something 19th-century audiences were undoubtably used to.
Wilson plunged into period performing style more fervently than his string colleagues. His extreme restriction on vibrato and his frequent use of portamento slides between notes brought his tone at times quite close to the sound preserved on early recordings of Brahms’s favorite violinist, Joseph Joachim. Joachim sounds like adenoidal insectoid whining to modern ears. Apparently, though, it’s what was admired in the 19th century.
Violist Nicole Forsyth burst out with some gut-wrenching moaning solos. In general, hers and the other inner lines were easy to hear as separate voices, bringing out some details not usually audible in this work. Second violinist Rachael Beesley and cellist Daniel Yeadon did not venture quite so far into period style.
Combine Wilson’s portamento with de Costa’s frequently arpeggiated chords at the piano – not the grand, ostentatious rolling affected by modern pianists when the score instructs it, this just made the chords feel slightly crunchy – and the relaxed and easy violin-piano pairing sometimes resembled the casual strumming of a ukulele. That is not a comparison that has ever come to my mind with Brahms before.
By Sunday, the symposium was over, but I had another concert to review: an all-Beethoven program in San Jose by the Auryn Quartet. This was the first time I prepared for a Beethoven quartet concert review as I would for a Beethoven symphony review: by doing no preparation whatever. Partly lack of time, but the degree that my knowledge of these quartets has deepened over the decade I've been reviewing performances is large enough that I figure I know them by now as well as I'm going to.
The happy face on the cellist during the Op. 18 was rendered slightly weirder for me by the fact that, inperson though not in photographs, the cellist bears a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. Eventually deciding that the other three were Sam Neill, John Goodman (younger and thinner), and Rutger Hauer, I called it a night.
What should I have on Monday, though not for review, but another string quartet concert, this one from a group called the Vogler Quartet, also German, consisting of three ordinary-looking stocky guys of medium height and an impressively tall, sepulchral cellist, who looked as if he should either be answering doorbells by saying "You rang?" or else stalking down castle corridors with creaking knees, muttering about how long he'd served the Earl of Groan.
Their vigorous style and rigid ensemble made them the perfect group to match Schubert's Quartetsatz and Beethoven's Op. 18/3 with the First Quartet of Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech Jewish modernist (and Holocaust victim) whose music has the same sense of adventurousness as Bartok's without crawling out nearly so far on a limb. If only the first violin hadn't been almost consistently slightly out of tune with the rest of them, it would have been very fine.
The Schubert Rosamunde Quartet that followed was better in tune, but this quartet is so relaxed and peaceful that these dramatic players sounded as if they'd been stifled.
