Concert Review: Music@Menlo Aftermath: 1945

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 Their reading of the first movement was more withdrawn than I'm used to hearing, which was not a bad thing.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?

Building Your Library: Shostakovich String Quartet No.8

Composed July 12-14, 1960

Premiered by Beethoven Quartet

Lasting on average a little over twenty minutes and composed in the span of three days, this quartet was in all likelihood intended to be a requiem by Shostakovich for himself. It tells a tale of, what I would imagine, the mentality and inner turmoil one suffers while living under the Soviet regime. The year 1960 was a bad year for Shostakovich; shortly before the genesis of this quartet, he was diagnosed with myelitis (an inflammation of the spinal cord) and was forced to join the Communist Party. This quartet is a very personal statement by Shostakovich; the musical cryptogram of his own name, where Dmitri Shostakovich (DSCH) become D-E♭-C-B in musical annotation, serves as the melodic motif that each movement is derived from. It’s quite amazing how in intervals between each note in the DSCH motif can sound lugubrious and threatening at the same time. Officially, the dedication of the piece is for all “the victims of fascism and war”. However, Shostakovich’s son interprets this as for the victims of all totalitarianism while his daughter believed it to be a dedication to himself. Even Shostakovich, in his characteristic sarcasm, describes the piece as "an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs... It is a pseudo-tragic quartet, so much so that while I was composing it I shed the same amount of tears as I would have to pee after half-a-dozen beers". [1] Given all this, it is easy to see why many believe that this quartet serves as an epitaph preceding suicide.

The piece begins with the DSCH motif in canon, starting from the lowest member of the quartet to the highest.

Austere, defeated. While Shostakovich usually uses DSCH in a more bombastic and defiant manner (e.g. Symphony No.10, Violin Concerto No.1), the emptiness and complete absence of texture is what speaks to the heart of the listener. The whole movement seems to be enveloped in a smoky haze. Even the most beautiful moment in the movement is marred by something ominous, a disturbance beneath the surface.

If the first movement represented the introspective resignation of life, the second movement represents the fury that led up to it. This movement, no more than 3 minutes, is a fist that refuses to unclench for the duration. It is the complete compression of kinetic energy and release of reckless abandon that makes it so effective next to the disturbed placidity of the first movement. Perhaps in remembrance to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Shostakovich recalls in this movement the famous Jewish theme he used for his second piano trio.

Just as suddenly as it began, the music abruptly cuts off. A little introduction by the first violin bridges into the danse macabre of the third movement. Perverted and grotesque, Shostakovich envisioned himself dancing this waltz of death with the DSCH motif skittering above the waltz rhythm.

Schizophrenic paranoia pervades the movement. What’s most shocking in this sequence is the ending to the phrase. Just when the music seems to be fading away, a bloodcurdling scream erupts, as if someone has just been brutally stabbed.

The penultimate movement begins with knuckle-breaking knocks. What is it like to be a public servant in a totalitarian government and living in constant fear that small mistake would result in one disappearing into the night? This fear plagued Shostakovich his whole life, especially after the first denunciation in 1936 (after the fallout from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District) and the second denunciation in 1948. It was during that time that Shostakovich "waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn't be disturbed". [2] How he must have dreamt nightmares of or imagined those knocks on the door, always unsure if the next time would be his turn. The last movement serves as an epilogue; wretched back to reality, the memories of before remain only as whispers within an empty room.

The ideal recording results from an ensemble that chooses effective tempi in the inner three movements (usually on the faster side) and a strong sense of musical continuity in the outer two.

While the Emerson SQ recording has been much praised, resulting from both their Grammy win as well as their reputation as a quartet, I find there are major issues with the balance. The microphones pick up the viola and cello easily enough but it makes the violins sound far away in comparison. The sound is also very dry and brittle in the violins and overly resonant in the lower voices.

For a great historical recording, the Borodin SQ really lets the music speak for itself. Their cellist, Valentin Berlinsky, once told of a story where his quartet went to Shostakovich's home and played this piece for the composer. After the last chord faded away, the composer sat there, deep in thought, staring at nothing. Shostakovich rose from his seat shakily, and left the room. The quartet packed up and left. The next day Berlinsky received a call from Shostakovich, whereupon the composer apologized for not speaking to them afterwards, for their performance transported him back to a dark place and time in his life. Needless to say, this recording if a must-have for fans of this piece.

One of the most stylish readings comes from the Fitzwilliam SQ. They employ some daring slides in the third movements that heighten the perversion of the waltz. The only complaint I may have (and it's not that big a complaint) is their tempi are too fast, especially in the second movement. The music should always have forward momentum, but not frenetically so.

The St. Lawrence SQ has also recorded a great recording of the work. Embodying the swashbuckling American-style of quartet playing, their collective tone carries rougher edge that makes the music pop. The downside is the individual tones from each member are too different, which effects moments in the slower movements when the music is more static.

JEFF RECOMMENDS

The Jerusalem SQ is a quartet with the Midas touch; every piece they record turns to gold. They are, in my opinion, the perfect quartet. The way they balance the heart and the head in their playing along with their homogeneity in sound is what makes them special. In this recording, the way they are able to maintain the melodic line without sacrificing the Largo tempo in the first and last movement is amazing. Their tempo choices are perfect and their intensity and high-octane reading serves them well in the inner movements. I am convinced there will never be a better recording than this one.

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[1] Shostakovich, ed. Glikman; pp.90-91
[2] Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, Elizabeth Wilson; p.183