Concert Review—

American String Quartet Offered Perfection On A Beautiful Sunday Afternoon

By Wendy Wipprecht

Sunday, September 19, was one of those ten or so perfect days the weather allows us every year. Most people went for a last visit to the beach, did some yard work, or just found any excuse to be outdoors.

For those who spent the end of that afternoon indoors at Edmond Town Hall, it was a perfect day as well. They got to celebrate the opening of Newtown Friends of Music’s 33rd season by hearing the American String Quartet perform work of Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert.

The members of the American String Quartet, an ensemble celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary, are Peter Winograd (violin), Laurie Carney (violin), Daniel Avshalomov (viola), and Wolfram Koessel (cello).

The program began with Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, Op. 76, No. 5, one of six quartets in Opus 76. This group of quartets, composed when Haydn was in his mid-sixties, comprises some of his most ambitious chamber works. In these quartets Haydn strays from the expected sonata form, emphasizes thematic continuity, and in general moves the genre forward in terms of complexity and scope.

The D Major quartet begins with a graceful main theme that is taken through a series of variations, but the course of the movement suddenly changes, picks up speed, and becomes more fugal, more intense, and more orchestral in its sound. The next movement, Largo, gives the quartet its nickname, because it is the longest and most densely emotional of its movements.

It is a test of any ensemble’s expressivity, consisting mainly of solos for the first violin and heartfelt solos for the other instruments, all performed in a singing and sad style, as indicated by “cantabile e mesto” in the directions. A very sprightly, brief minuet follows, in which the cheerful opening melody is handed off later to the agitated-sounding cello.

The last movement, Presto, is full of jokes and surprises, even for Haydn. For example, the dramatic opening theme is really a closing cadence, and the next thing you hear is a folk song. Expectations are set up but never fulfilled; forms are stretched to their limits. Like the first movement, this entertaining movement has orchestral yearnings.

Haydn often masks his complexities under a veil of elegance, charm, and ease. In the same way, the American String Quartet does not insist on its “personality”: the ensemble’s performing style is cool, undramatic, and restrained. Expression, even passion, is saved for the music itself.

When ASQ plays Haydn, he is as listener-friendly and charming as anyone could want, but he is also that restless, energetic inventor who constantly pushed the generic envelope. This quartet, which asks the performers to sing sad songs, tell jokes, and sound as big as an orchestra, was splendidly played.

Next on the program was Beethoven’s Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp.” The quartet’s unusual beginning, a short, inward-sounding, plangent but held-back Poco adagio, yields to a more lyrical Allegro theme. Soon come the pizzicato notes, in which strings are plucked rather than bowed, that helped give the quartet its nickname (which was supplied not by the composer but by the publisher).

As this movement progresses, the writing gets stranger and more intense: harmonies threaten to become dissonant, and the first violin has a wild solo played against the pizzicato notes of the other instruments. Could this quartet have been written only thirteen or so years after the Haydn?

The next movement, Adagio, ma non troppo, is simply beautiful. Beethoven takes a lovely melody and elaborates it in three cantabile repetitions, each more rich and complex than the last. Like the Haydn Largo, this Adagio movement is positioned at the center of its quartet, and also demands greatly expressive playing.

But Beethoven won’t let the performers or the audience rest easy in all that beauty; he launches into a dazzling Presto played at warp speed that echoes the famous “V” theme of the Fifth Symphony and then moves, without pause, into the quartet’s final movement, Allegretto con variazioni. Here the Allegretto theme is taken through six variations that alternate between choppy-sounding and flowing treatments. A brisk coda unexpectedly ends with three soft chords.

This work makes many demands on performers, including asking four string instruments to stand in for an orchestra. It asks for fast, precise playing, and then it asks for playing of almost heart-rending beauty. Finally, it asks for every structural nuance to be made plain. ASQ met all these demands, and even made this writer wish she could melt into the audience and just listen, listen, listen.

After intermission, there was excitement in the air. The rest of the program would be devoted to “Death and the Maiden,” one of the most important and most beloved works in the chamber music repertory. Schubert’s String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 is so named because the theme of the quartet’s second movement is derived from Schubert’s earlier Lied of that title. (The text of the song is from an earlier German poem, also called “Death and the Maiden,” by Matthias Claudius, whose works provided the texts for twelve other Schubert Lieder.)

Death was very much on Schubert’s mind. During the previous year, he had been very ill, and was even hospitalized, with tertiary syphilis; he knew not only that he would die in a few years but also that he would never be healthy again — a terrible fate at any age, but especially frightening and cruel for the young and gifted. (Schubert was then in his mid-twenties; he did not live to see his thirty-first birthday.) He would continue to write furiously and at many different levels, from the frothy to the sublime, but this quartet seems to be set aside for a meditation on death and dying.

It begins abruptly and dramatically with a figure, a quarter note followed by triplet eighths, which sets up the work’s thematic and rhythmic structure. Its insistent, frequent, unmistakable return throughout the movement reminds us that death cannot be put off. Even a sweet and lyrical second theme cannot push it aside for long; the figure keeps returning, migrating through the other instruments, often adding tension under the lyricism of the melody. When that rhythmic figure returns to center stage, it darkens the end of the first movement.

The second movement, Andante con moto, is where the earlier song, “Death and the Maiden,” enters the quartet; the movement’s theme derives from the piano introduction to the song. In the song a horrified maiden confronts Death (“Go away, you fierce man of bone! Do not touch me!”). Death answers, quietly and slowly, saying that he comes as a friend, not as a punishment, and that she will sleep softly in his arms.

This theme is taken through five variations, none of which stray too far from the theme, and its underlying rhythm and tempo belong to a steady walk. I’ve heard more sloppily emotional versions of this movement that lose the constant, forward motion and thereby lessen the movement’s impact: played well—superbly, by the American String Quartet—it reminds us of funeral processions, it takes seriously the idea that death can offer release from pain, and it shows the insistence and inevitability of death. This sad but beautiful section is the longest in the quartet.

A very brief Scherzo movement full of rhythmic challenges and unexpected cadences follows. Like the first movement, it contrasts a dramatic opening statement with a second theme of delicate, almost sprightly sweetness. Of course, the tension of the opening returns to end the section. It prepares the way for the intense, driving Presto finale, which Schubert begins with a theme that reminds us of a horse at full gallop, a theme which pervades the movement and also seems to be faster at every repetition.

Its momentum may be diverted by a lovely first violin part, for example, but the return is inevitable; each melodic interlude offers only a brief respite, The movement ends with a dizzying run of unison playing, faster and faster, culminating in a swift, two-note end. This section recalls the tarantella, a fast dance intended to ward off the poisonous effects of the tarantula’s bite: convulsions, madness, and death. But its propulsive, forward motion and its demonic energy speak more to death’s inevitable and swift approach. Though the tarantella may hint at a light at the end of the tunnel, the rest of the movement declares that it’s the light of an oncoming train.

The audience — a full house — sprang to its feet and gave a standing ovation, calling the American String Quartet back three times. It is much easier to applaud their magnificent playing than to describe it.

Their restrained personal style as performers frees them to give their energy and passion to the music itself, and also to concentrate on its technical demands. At the same time, their interpretive skills and superbly sensitive playing take us into each work’s emotional world without losing sight of its structure, its intellectual part. Passion and precision are said to be opposites, but in the American String Quartet they unite and live.