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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
August 6, 2008
There is certainly a thesis or two to be written on the subject of keys and the moods they evince in different composers.
The key of d minor, for example, seems to have elicited music from various composers which, while clearly the product of their respective individual personalities, is still somehow unlike anything else in their output. Examples which spring readily to mind are the first movements of Beethoven's and Bruckner's Ninth Symphonies.
And almost all of Schubert's Quartet, D.810, "Der Tod und das Mädchen", known in English as "Death and the maiden" - although, as Jack Westrup points out, there seems no reason to employ the old-fashioned "maiden" rather than the usual translation of the "perfectly ordinary German word" as "girl".
The quartet, the product of "an imagination working at high pressure and an intelligence which is firmly in control" (Westrup again) provided the second half of Wednesday's superb concert by the Lafayette String Quartet.
The opening movement, taken at a steadier tempo than one often hears - and the more dramatic for it - was wonderfully weighty, the inner voices relentlessly propulsive and all distinguished, as we have come to expect, by a tangible unanimity of purpose and the razor-sharp ensemble coupled with an intuitive rubato which can only come from two decades of playing together.
And I commend to younger ensembles, such as those currently studying with the Quartet, the ominous, magnificently-controlled crescendo at the the beginning of the coda.
It is, of course, the slow movement which gives the quartet its sobriquet, although the theme is actually made up of the introduction to the eponymous lied and part of the accompaniment of the young girl's reply to Death, rather than any of the vocal line.
The beautifully-contoured theme was merely the introit to a sublime performance of the movement. The interplay between Pamela Highbaugh Aloni's cello and the other three instruments in the second variation was delicious and the third variation had a real bite.
The energetic scherzo led to a suitably climactic finale, with a well-chosen opening tempo (start this movement too fast and you are in real trouble by the end), building inexorably towards its triumphant final coda.
The first half of the evening featured works by two women composers active in the first half of the twentieth century - and, oddly, having the same initials.
Rebecca Clarke's Poem dates from the mid-1920s; its pastoral lyricism was quite lovely and the quartet produced some gorgeous playing. One can only regret that Clarke never completed the quartet of which this was intended as one movement.
Ruth Crawford's was fifteen years younger than Clarke and her Quartet dates from four or five years later (it was published in 1931).
I enjoyed this music greatly when I heard the Lafayettes play it back in April (review here) and can only say that a renewed acquaintance only made me appreciate the work - and the remarkable playing required to convey its considerable complexity accurately - all the more.
I don't believe I've ever heard the quartet play better than this evening - which is saying a great deal - and this was a thoroughly rewarding programme.
If have a very, very - almost vanishingly - small niggle it was with the encore. Samuel Barber's Adagio from the String Quartet No.1 - better known in its string orchestra guise as the Adagio for Strings - is a wonderful piece and was played as well as I've ever heard.
But I tend to agree with Sir Thomas Beecham: after a profound masterpiece (which the Schubert decidedly is) the encore should be a "lollipop", frothy and fun, and decidedly un-serious.
On the other hand, to be able to play music of this emotional depth with the control the quartet displayed after such a brilliant and penetrating performance of the Schubert...
A wonderful evening.
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