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First Unitarian Church
June 21, 2009
The year 1941 was a turbulent one for Sergei Prokofiev. In the spring he had a heart attack - the first of several over the next few years; his marriage broke up, due to his friendship with Mira Mendelson - who, whatever her other qualities, had strong ties with the Party; and, when war began in June, Prokofiev, along with many other artists, was evacuated by the government from Moscow to the relative safety of the Caucasus.
Although the outbreak of war had spurred him to work on his projected opera of War and Peace, the first of his wartime compositions to be completed and performed was his String Quartet No.2 - aptly enough, the premiere, in Moscow on September 5, 1942, was delayed by a German air raid.
It was with Prokofiev's Second Quartet that Sunday's third concert in this year's Eine Kleine Summer Music series opened, in a fine performance which I imagine probably inspired many of the audience to investigate the composer's chamber music further.
The work employs a number of authentic Kabardian folk melodies - to which Prokofiev was introduced by the local arts administrator in the town of Nalchik - and it was surely a good idea for the quartet to illustrate Kenji Fusé's commendably brief and pertinent spoken introduction by playing them: this is not, after all, particularly familiar music.
Despite being an ad-hoc ensemble, Terence Tam, Julian Vitek, Kenji Fusé and Laura Backstrom betrayed no sense of unfamiliarity, either with the music or with each other. Together they produced a fine sound, whether it was the big, full tone of the opening and closing of the first movement, or the more delicate textures of the perky pizzicatos in the central section of the adagio - the composer imitating the kemange, a native Caucasian instrument.
The highlight, for me, was that second movement and particularly Backstrom's eloquent cello - she seems to be playing better than ever this year - singing the love song "Synilyaklik Zhir", which frames the movement.
In a very different way, the year 1876 was a significant one for Tchaikovsky: it began with successful Russian performances of his Third Symphony and First Piano Concerto and ended with his resolution to marry (desperately ill-advised though that was) and with his first contact with the patron who was to support him for the next fourteen years, Nadezhda von Meck.
Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No.3 was composed speedily and first performed in March 1876. Its composer had immediate reservations about the piece - oddly, for, as David Brown observes in The New Grove, it is "far more characteristic" than the second quartet, a piece which its composer was convinced, even nine months after its premiere, was his best work.
In keeping with its dedication to the memory of Tchaikovsky's friend Ferdinand Laub, the music is mostly sombre, if not downright funereal, in mood.
Once again the performance was irreproachable: beautifully played and somehow uplifting rather than disheartening, despite its sorrowful nature.
Whether or no 2008 was a good year for Cameron Wilson I cannot say. He certainly used at least part of it productively, for it was last year that he composed his Three Vignettes for String Quartet.
As anyone who has ever heard Joe Trio - of which he is violinist - perform his music will know, Wilson is a pasticheur par excellence - and therein lies a potential pitfall: so authentic did his two original themes in the opening Allegro non troppo con old tyme sound that I suspect that, as Percy Grainger discovered with his own Mock Morris, listeners may have difficulty believing that the melodies are not traditional.
The vignettes made a splendid diversion in an otherwise fairly serious programme, the first and last (Allegro molto yee-hah) pieces being particularly jolly - and the latter particularly energetic; the middle Andante con waltzississimo was quite charming - although I could not hear echoes in the harmonies of Copland and Schubert, as Wilson suggests. I did hear the influence of Ravel though.
It was gratifying to see the hall full for this less-than-familiar programme. Clearly it is a well-established fact that the Eine Kleine name is a guarantee of quality.
The series ends next week with Prokofiev, Dohnányi and Strauss from Jonathan Crow and friends.
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