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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
June 16, 2015
For Yehudi Menuhin he would "remain for me the absoluteness through which I judge others...[He] gave me the light that has guided my entire existence"; for Pau Casals he was "the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart"; according to Vincent d'Indy, if all of Beethoven's works were destroyed he could have reconstructed them from memory; he was primarily a violinist but, according to Alfred Cortot, he had the better piano technique.
He was George Enescu - later, after moving to Paris, Georges Enesco - composer, violinist, pianist, teacher (Menuhin was only one of his pupils, along with Christian Ferras, Ivry Gitlis, Arthur Grumiaux and Ida Haendel among many others) and possessor of a fearsome memory.
All of which makes it somewhat puzzling that we do not hear more of his music, the Romanian Rhapsodies aside; the presence of his early octet for strings (composed at just nineteen) on Tuesday's QuartetFest West programme was therefore all the more welcome.
The combined forces of the host Lafayette Quartet and the guest Penderecki Quartet gave an enthralling performance of the octet, a performance which deservedly brought the audience to its feet, many of them probably thinking to themselves that they simply must hunt down a recording.
The octet begins unusually, with the entire group - save for the second cello - playing in unison (Enescu was to repeat this in the opening movement of his first orchestral suite), before opening up into a rhapsodic torrent of sound (all the good octets seem to open "torrentially" - Mendelssohn, obviously, also Gade). The music was dense, but never sounded cluttered.
The fugal second movement was very intense and exacting, not to mention fascinating, as the fugal entries seemed to come in pairs, beginning with the fourth violin and first viola. The slow movement, following attacca, featured a hymn-like theme and was quite lovely. The finale is a very quick waltz with an angular theme and fugal elements, which built inexorably to its tumultuous final coda.
A wonderful close to the evening, and the festival.
I imagine that one's approach to Schubert's great String Quintet, D.956 depends on how aware you believe the composer was of his own impending demise. Most performances have a distinctly valedictory feel to them.
Tuesday's performance however, in which the Penderecki Quartet were joined by the Lafayettes' Pamela Highbaugh Aloni on second cello, was not of their number.
If I may so characterise it, it was a performance which raged "against the dying of the light", the keyword of the whole thing being "driven".
As truly great music can bear a considerable amount of interpretive weight, it would be futile to dismiss this as an invalid approach, although I know that I was not alone in feeling that the performance became somewhat one-dimensional and skated over some of the profundity which we expect.
Which is not to say that the music was not well played, for it was - very. I must also commend the ensemble on their symmetrically-arranged layout - reading clockwise we had first violin, first cello, viola, second cello, second violin. This enabled a number of details in the music which are usually submerged to be heard clearly. Some antiphonal, but I am thinking in particular of the "layering" which Schubert does on several occasions, the most obvious (no matter how the players are seated) being the work's opening, the initial phrase being played by a "normal" quartet (violins, viola and first cello) and then repeated by the lower group (second violin, viola, both cellos).
The slow movement, one of Schubert's rare adagios, simply did not work for me; the opportunity for a moment's repose - especially in such a performance as this - was not really taken advantage of, although, again, there were some lovely touches: the final bars, in particular, seeming to achieve the tranquility previously missing.
The scherzo was very quick, with plenty of momentum and bounce; by contrast, however, the trio was extremely slow, so slow that my attention nearly flagged.
The defiant dance which was the finale was, to my mind, the least successful movement, the rubato in the second subject seemed exaggerated and, once again, the music was too driven, despite some truly excellent playing.
I prefer to view this as an interesting experiment which did not quite come off.
Having said which, this was not a concert I should have wanted to miss; the opportunity to hear two quartets of this stature (i.e. world-class) is not one which comes along very often.
Long may QuartetFest West flourish.
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