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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
June 12, 2013
The second of Mozart's Prussian String Quartets (K. 589) set the mood for this concert: cheerful yet profound, robust yet crystalline, and leaving no room for error. The first of the four movements could be interpreted as a happy dialogue between close friends. This should come naturally to the members of the Lafayette String Quartet who began their collaboration in 1986 and, despite some inevitable ups and downs, are still together 27 years later. One of the all-female foursome, Joanna Hood, had been taken ill and was replaced by Yariv Aloni.
The quartet dedicated the second piece - Eugene Weigel's "Quartet Search" from 1996 - to their absent colleague. The Lafayette String Quartet regards Weigel as their "great-grandfather", given that he was a founding member of the famous Walden String Quartet that inspired the formation of the Juilliard String Quartet which spawned the Cleveland Quartet which triggered the Lafayette before they moved to Victoria. The opening, mildly atonal, theme of the "Quartet Search" is searching indeed, like a plaintive chant "What is-the m-e-e-eaning ...?". The yearning for an answer becomes desperate in the stormy second movement and is followed by a sense of resignation in the third. The opening pizzicato all around in the fourth movement suggests optimism that an answer may be at hand after all. This movement slips seamlessly into the last "Madrigale: Grazio con Amore" which not only provides a reassuring answer but also drives it home in a switch to stunning tonal harmonies.
I had waited impatiently for the final performance of the concert, namely Fanny Hensel's "String Quartet in E flat Major", because I am fundamentally a 19th century romantic and am always keen to make new discoveries within that somewhat worn-out genre. Fanny Hensel was Felix Mendelssohn's elder sister. They were very close, not least due to their shared passion for musical composition, and they listened very carefully to each other's critique. That said, Fanny had the misfortune at that time of being a woman. Her musical pursuits were tolerated rather than encouraged by her father, and even brother Felix felt that it would be inappropriate for her works to be formally published. Here is what he wrote in a letter to a relative: "From my knowledge of Fanny I should say that she has neither inclination nor vocation for authorship. She is too much all that a woman ought to be for this. She regulates her house, and neither thinks of the public nor of the musical world, nor even of music at all, until her first duties are fulfilled. Publishing would only disturb her in these, and I cannot say that I approve of it." The first three movements cater to the musical tastes of the time, although the final bars of each movement are surprisingly lame for the Romantic era. However, the fourth takes off and ends with a flourish. Musical purists might object to my associating important works with happy dialogues and searching questions. Unashamedly, I now found myself doing more of the same, whereby the music evoked visions of starlings in ever-changing, cloud-like formations swooping across the azure winter sky of Sicily.
The members of the Quartet combine exquisite musicianship with amiable informality in their rapport with the audience. Their private jokes during the performance were for all to see, if not to overhear, and they earned much laughter when Elliott-Goldschmid explained that her late arrival on stage after the intermission was because she was busy changing shoes in the anteroom.
To honour the 50th anniversary of UVic, the Lafayette has revived the Quartet Fest West, an intensive 2-week workshop which the Quartet initiated in the early 1990s and which attracted students from all over North America. This year's students have come from as far away as New Zealand, Brazil and Italy. They showed up in force at the concert, and the final applause came as close to a standing ovation as I have ever experienced after a string quartet concert.
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