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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
June 14, 2013
"There is nothing actually pleasant about [Bartók's] music but standing up to it gives one the same exhilarating satisfaction as bathing in a cold and rough sea or watching a test match."
Admittedly, Peter Gammond wrote those words almost half a century ago; we should also take into account the fact that he was writing with his tongue firmly ensconced in his cheek, although, as always, the best humour contains at least a germ of the truth within it: in this case, the general perception of Bartók's music at the time, which was that it was music to be endured rather than enjoyed. (And, for those unacquainted with the great game, a test match is an international cricket match, which used to last five days.)
Times have most certainly changed and I was quite surprised to find that Bartók's String Quartet No.6, a work I first encountered around the same time that Gammond was writing his magnum opus, and which provided one of the highlights of Friday's concert by the Penderecki String Quartet, no longer sounds modern. (And this was confirmed by several people I spoke to afterwards.)
Which tends rather to suggest that modernity is not so much a quality of the music, more in the ear of the listener. Or, to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, we cannot define modernity, but we know it when we hear it.
Friday's performance, from Christine Vlajk's plaintive viola solo to the far-from-untroubled final bars, was superb. Despite the volatility of the tempos, especially in the opening movement, the playing was, as I wrote in my notebook, "intense and ferociously together".
I know that I am not the only listener for whom the standout movement was the third, with its slashing chords (surely Bernard Hermann must have had this in mind when writing the score to Hitchcock's Psycho?), glorious glissandos, sinister syncopations and wonderfully deranged pizzicatos.
The evening's opening work was by Haydn. To quote Gammond again, "the general feeling is that Haydn could have been as good as Mozart if he had not been so incurably happy for most of his life".
If there is one genre in which Haydn devotees most certainly do not need to make apologies for their hero, it is the string quartet. Although, in my experience, many string quartets owe apologies to Haydn for their inability to play his music adequately.
The Pendereckis need make no such apology, for their performance of Op.33 No.5 (the penultimate of the so-called "Russian" quartets) was a delight from start to finish, in fact the very first annotation in my notebook asks if there is anything more civilised than a Haydn quartet. (Short answer: no.) And throughout, the four consistently achieved that summit of Haydn playing, that marvellously oxymoronic state of relaxed tension. The unanimity of their tone, attack, in fact every aspect of their playing, was exceptional.
"Dvořák was the hard-working son of a pork butcher and looked like one himself. With a head full of dance rhythms and country melodies he went amiably through life writing countless works and giving them all the wrong opus numbers. He spent two years in America and actually enjoyed the experience." (Gammond again.)
The concert closed with Dvořák's penultimate String Quartet No.13, Op.106 - and it surely comes as no surprise to discover that its successor, No.14, is Op.105 - in a marvellously exuberant performance which could not help but leave one wondering why the only Dvořák quartet we hear with anything approaching regularity is the "American".
With his melodic personality writ large in every bar, this was a wonderful ending to the evening. The joyous opening movement simply swept all before it; the slow movement, features a typically lovely Dvořákian theme and is replete with several tense episodes and big dramatic gestures yet (as one always knew it would) draws to a quite delectable close.
The scherzo, with its two quite different trios, was great fun and featured wonderfully robust arpeggiated rhythmic accompaniment from viola and cello.
The finale, after a beautiful short introduction, was exuberant and energetic, even if (as with the first movement) Dvořák could not quite bring himself to end it. One imagines him sitting, pen in hand, thinking "I must really end here....no, alright, I'll put in just one more modulation" (and indeed, thinking this several times).
But when the end result is so attractive and the playing is this good, who would begrudge the extra bars? Not I.
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