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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
July 30, 2015
One criticism that is still occasionally heard from would-be sophisticates is that classical music is too rhythmically limited, being almost entirely in double or triple time. (As if this somehow undermines the profound emotional and intellectual content.)
While it is undoubtedly true of the overwhelming majority of works written before the twentieth century - although there are a surprising number of pieces from the Renaissance written in "odd" time signatures - there seems to have been a small trend, begun in the nineteenth century, towards more complex rhythmic patterns.
The best-known examples today are probably the "waltz" which is the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony (there was supposedly one conductor who could never beat the required five and used to perform the music in 3/4); Mars from Holst's The Planets (Imogen Holst clearly recalled her father, no natural conductor, practising beating five at home); and the finale of Ravel's String Quartet.
I'm sure I was not the only person in the Phillip T Young Recital Hall on Thursday who had previously been unaware that Alexander Borodin had also ventured into this perilous territory.
To be precise the "Scherzo in 5/4", as it was billed, is from his unfinished third quartet (and was later orchestrated by Glazunov in his completion of Borodin's third symphony).
The scherzo provided the sizzling closer to the opening half of the Alcan Quartet's recital. Unlike Tchaikovsky and Holst - but like Ravel - Borodin does not subdivide his five beats, but then the music is very fast (with an almost one in a bar feel), and the five is interrupted periodically by groups of three bars of double time; furthermore the trio is in 3/4.
That trio was slow and languorous and featured a gorgeous melody which could have come from the pen of no other composer.
Although one felt that, had Borodin lived, he might have indulged in a little judicious editing, the piece nevertheless held the attention to its close, if only by dint of the wonderfully spirited and accurate playing.
The final movement of Beethoven's final completed work - the String Quartet Op.135 (only the replacement finale for Op.130 came after) - famously has the superscription "Muss es sein? Es muss sein!" ("Must it be? It must be!")
Nobody has ever established for a certainty the precise significance of the phrases. Philip Radcliffe, in his 1965 study of the quartets, gathers together number of the known theories: "Suggestions have included 'Must I die?', 'Must I go to the trouble of writing another movement?', 'Must I pay my laundry bill?', 'Must I let you have more money?' (to his cook). And there is a further possibility that Beethoven, realising perhaps that one theme was a melodic inversion of the other, added the words later".
It is also worth mentioning that Beethoven did not necessarily realise or intend that this should be his last quartet and it has even been suggested that Op.135 was intended as the first of a new group of quartets.
Whatever the truth of the matter, which we are unlikely ever to know for sure, we are left with a work which, by comparison with its extraordinary, ground-breaking predecessors, almost sounds conventional.
The key word, of course, being "almost".
The Alcans closed their programme with a superb performance of Op.135, with excellent, cohesive tone throughout. I was particularly taken with the enigmatic close to the opening movement, the obsessive rhythmic impetus they imparted to the scherzo, the lush, resonant slow movement, which was quite lovely. As to that finale, joke or not, with its grave opening and bright allegro, the quartet's impressive playing conveyed sufficient ambiguity to keep us guessing until the end.
Outstanding.
I must confess to failing to understand the import of the title of Andrew MacDonald's String Quartet No.5 - "Perfect Day". Composed for the Alcans' twenty-fifth anniversary last year, the piece is essentially concordant with slightly angular melodic lines. The first half was more or less non-stop forward momentum; when the music slowed it seemed to lose intensity and, for at least one listener, interest.
It was, however, wonderfully played.
The evening opened with the first of Haydn's so-called "Tost" quartets, Op.54 No.1.
This was most distinguished Haydn playing, light and airy in the opening movement, exquisitely beautiful in the slow movement. The minuet was marvellously lithe, with some lovely rubato in the trio. The finale, with its scurrying accompaniment, got a touch ferocious at times, but was never overplayed. Ensemble - as throughout the evening - was exceptional and I loved the cheeky close.
This was an evening which demonstrated triumphantly why, for some, the string quartet is the highest form of chamber music.
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