calimac

So we got home from Mythcon mid-evening on Monday, after which six-hour drive I unpacked and took to bed; and spent most of the day Tuesday dealing with yet another Internet outage (these are getting tiring). And so the Mythcon report will have to wait, as by this evening I was to plunge into the Mendelssohn Year at the Music@Menlo Festival that's going to take up much of my time for the next three weeks.

Tonight's concert was Felix's early string quartets with the Pacifica Quartet. I particularly appreciated the opportunity to hear again Op. 13, which seemed like an impenetrable brick when I first encountered it not that long ago, but is rapidly developing into one of my favorite quartets. Nice to confirm that my chops for learning works new to me are still in good working order.

But this concert functioned mostly as a chance to get to know the Pacifica prior to hearing them team with the St. Lawrence (a group I know very well) in the String Octet on Friday. Oh, am I looking forward to that: I love the Octet, but this will be only perhaps the third time I've ever heard it played live.

And it should be interesting, because the Pacifica is a highly distinctive, unusual ensemble. Now I have to figure out how to write about them. Consider this post my notes for later reviews.

They are anything but flamboyant. Their style is interior, not repressed; but what gets out is fervent. What in German is called innig. First violinist Simin Ganatra has a strikingly dark, heavy tone; common among a certain breed of concerto soloists but basically unheard of in quartet leaders. She plays with the most intense concentration on her face, almost strained, giving it her all, while the three men, no less attentive to their work, take it with calmer expressions.

I kept trying to think of a suitable word for the distinctive sound of second violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson, and could only come up with "cultivated." Masumi Per Rostad, viola: so much a pure inner voice, so gently hesitant and deeply melded into the ensemble, that if Mendelssohn hadn't written a couple fugatos which he begins, I might not have been able to remark on the smoothness of his tone, so very violin-like is his viola playing. If he is matter, Geraldine Walther is anti-matter. Brandon Vamos, cello, on the other hand, though even more buttery than Rostad, always keeps sonically apart from his colleagues. This isn't a matter of ensemble - nothing off about that, to be sure - but tone. Even in the fullest chords, the cello line stands on its own.

Together they took a fairly speed-demon dig through the quartets, but without skimming or superficiality. There was grip, if no grit. Given how tightly they were hanging on to the pieces - the slow introduction/conclusion to Op. 13 was like a hinge of the entire work - I was surprised at the chittery fleetness of the trio and part of the finale.

Deeply satisfying. But at the end I didn't want to clap fast and wildly, but to beat my program against the seat slowly and with extreme vehemence, to show my appreciation.