Shostakovich String Quartet No.8 in C Minor, Op.110
Miró Quartet
Britten The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op.35
Matthew Plenk, tenor
Ken Noda, piano
Strauss Metamorphosen
Jorja Fleezanis, Lily Francis, violins
Beth Guterman, Erin Keefe, violas
David Finckel, Ralph Kirshbaum, cellos
Scott Pingel, bass
On Tuesday's San Francisco Classical Voice newsletter, there was a contest. You can win two tickets to a Music@Menlo concert if you were one of the first two people to answer the trivia question correctly. Who knew all the random classical music trivia floating in my head would end up helping me score free concert tickets. Having been away from the music scene for a couple of months, this concert was a nice respite from all the job hunting I've been doing.
I have always been a huge fan of Miró Quartet; I have been trying to see them in concert ever since I saw them play in a masterclass with Isaac Stern. Them playing one of my favorite quartets (a piece I featured in a previous post, coincidentally) was just the icing on the cake. After a quick program change announcement by festival co-director Wu Han, the quartet took the stage. When they started to play, I was floored by their homogeneity in tone. It was absolutely stunning and made the starkness of the opening chorale that much more affecting. Furthermore, I was mesmerized by how attuned they were to one another's colors, contrary to the "American" style of quartet playing. Their reading of the first movement was more withdrawn than I'm used to hearing, which was not a bad thing. Even in the radiantly central episode, where first violin David Chang played the beautifully lyrical melody, the mood was more of sadness from remembrances of happier times rather than happiness of past remembrances. The second movement was full of grit, with violist John Largess standing out in an extended viola solo that climbed to stratospheric heights on the C string. The third movement was the highlight of the piece, where everyone had their moment to shine. The interrupting "scream" by second violinist Sandy Yamamoto, with her powerful tone, was jarring and shocking. Largess' decision to employ an extremely dry staccato (almost all stick and no hair) created a percussive effect that made the danse macabre all the more chilling. Cellist Joshua Gindele's effortless playing in the tenor range was otherworldly and his long pedal notes were perfectly controlled, making himself heard without distracting from the other voices. The hall was dead silent when the piece ended, and with a collective exhale, the audience sent the quartet off with a rousing applause.
I went in not knowing the Britten songs at all. The program notes informed the audience that Britten went on tour with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin shortly after the war ended. For the first concert, they performed in front of survivors from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The experience moved him very deeply and resulted in him composing the song cycle set to poems of John Donne, where all the poems centered centered around the theme of death, repentance, and reconciliation in faith with God. Tenor Matthew Plenk, renown in the opera world, was powerful and impressive in his singing. Even in the quietest moments of the cycle, his tone was pure and reverberant. In the louder passages, his sound pierced through the air and had a visceral effect on the listener's body. The song cycle was widely ranging, in terms of vocal range, dynamics, style, and tempi. It is the Britten we love (or hate), with angular, dissonant music juxtaposed with lyrically beautiful moments of respite. Watching how Plenk handles each song with ease is a sight to see in itself and I was extremely moved by his singing of the third song ("O might those sighes and teares") in particular. However, pianist Ken Noda was somewhat a liability in his accompaniment. The faster passages came out uneven and muffled, which he seemed to try to cover up with idiosyncratic theatrics. There were moments where I felt his playing was on a completely different plane relative to Plenk's, which is a pity because Plenk was doing some tremendous things with the music. However, the complaint is minor and I still thoroughly enjoyed the performance.
The only performance that didn't quite take off was the Strauss, which is unfortunate because I really wanted to like it. Perhaps this is because I recently performed the piece with UC Berkeley Symphony, but there were things that just didn't move me the way that I hope it would. The piece is a requiem for the physical and cultural ruin of Germany after the second World War. In Metamorphosen, Strauss takes two themes, one being heavily influenced by Beethoven's Eroica symphony, and slowly subjects them various changes. Structurally, the piece can be divided into three parts (or phases of the metamorphosis) and is played as one continuous movement. The divided parts can be viewed as a central animato section being bookended by two elegiac adagio sections. Moreover, within each section, there are fluxes in terms of emotional intensity and tempo. The two aspects of the performance that made it not as successful as it could have been were the pacing and ensemble of the piece.
With all the episodes within sections going on, it is easy to see how difficult it can be to pace the music as a collective group amongst seven people. The tempo in the beginning was much too slow. Just like talking in an overly slow manner eventually loses the listener's attention, the melodic line was stretched to the point of incoherence. Furthermore, the piece is composed such that the music should gain momentum up until the last adagio section. However, the group had a knack of stopping before transitioning into each new section, completely breaking the momentum and flow of the music. Even when the music instructs doppio tempo, the music becomes only slightly faster rather than doubly fast. By starting out slow and breaking the continuity of the piece, the performance never picked up speed and lost the sense of urgency that is integral to the piece.
My second disappointment was with ensemble playing itself. In the few times the whole group played as one, such as at the end of the doppio tempo, the sound was amazing. These sections unified the group, resulting in big chords that resonated with power and beauty. However, once the voices/parts become more soloistic and individualized, the overall feel of the piece becomes similarly fragmented. There are times when it felt as if everyone was playing their hearts out, but playing on different emotional levels because their part is different from the others. Consequently, some of the cooler inner-voice moments were washed out by the wave of sound. However, I must give props to Lily Francis, the second violinist in the group. Since I played this before, my ear was gravitating towards certain melodic passages, and in the few times that Francis had the solo line, she played with pathos and abandon.
After all is said and done, the concert was still extremely enjoyable. After last night's performance, I look forward to catching the Miró Quartet next time they're in town. Also looking forward to trying to win more tickets from SFCV, because who doesn't love free admission to great concerts?
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