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Church of St. John the Divine
October 24, 2018
"E. possessed with his wonderful music, 2nd Movement of 4tet."
Those words were written in her diary on October 8, 1918, by Alice, Lady Elgar; the following day, her seventieth birthday, she referred to the movement — which would eventually, less than eighteen months later, be played at her funeral — as "gracious and lovable".
The music in question was the Piacevole ("pleasing", "agreeable"), the second movement of Elgar's only mature string quartet. The composition spanned the final weeks of the War to End Wars: he resumed the slow movement on November 13 and completed the quartet ("last movement of Quartet — Very impassioned & carrying one along at a terrific rate...like Galloping of Squadrons...like a mighty force" — Lady Elgar's diary again) on Christmas Eve.
We seldom think of Elgar in terms of his chamber music, and, to be fair, there is very little of it, but what there is — the violin sonata, string quartet and piano quintet — offer a side of the mature composer which is not readily available in much of his larger-scale music. These works are deep and intimate.
And it was with a superb performance of the String Quartet (like two of his other final works, the violin sonata and cello concerto, in E minor) that the Emily Carr String Quartet closed Wednesday's exceptional recital.
It has been, I note with some dismay, the better part of two years since I last heard the quartet play (not entirely my fault: the traffic chaos caused by Esquimalt's Buccaneer Day caused me to miss their last "Music: Inside Out" presentation). On the plus side, they are, on this showing, playing better than ever before.
The opening movement of the Elgar was far too short, or so it felt. There was a rhapsodic feel to the music, adorned with some entirely appropriate portamento, which carried the listener along with it.
The slow movement was taken quite quickly, but not overly so; as Robert Anderson remarks, "if there is a danger the slow movement may sag, Elgar's metronome mark is a useful corrective". There was no such danger in this glorious outpouring of sound and the lovely close of the movement was exquisitely handled.
The opening of the finale features some almost angular material given to the viola and here was the only point in the entire performance where I felt even slight disappointment. And this, I hasten to add, was not because of the playing, but because of the seating: Mieka Michaux was seated to the right and so her viola was facing away from the audience; consequently the material did not have quite the rhythmic impact that it should.
Nevertheless, after what amounted to a scarcely noticeable hiccup, the movement did indeed carry one along "at a terrific rate" and brought the music (and the evening) to its exciting close.
The programme opened with something of a rarity: Josef Suk's Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale, "St. Wenceslas", composed in August 1914, immediately after the outbreak of war.
The quartet gave this unfamiliar (there is no relation to the Christmas Carol) music a deeply-focused, appropriately meditative account which ultimately proved very moving.
Most of the music is slow and was conveyed with a wonderful unanimity of tone from the four players. The turbulent central section culminated in a climax of remarkable intensity before gradually subsiding into the ethereal final bars.
Oddly, or perhaps not, the music I was most put in mind of by this piece would not be composed for over two decades: Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. (Which, coincidentally or not, features in the quartet's next programme, this coming February.)
Zoltán Kodály experienced his countryman Béla Bartók's String Quartet No.2 as three "episodes", namely "peaceful life—joy—suffering".
The quartet, composed from 1915 to October 1917, marks (along with The Wooden Prince and the Piano Suite) Bartók's return to composition after several years in which he concentrated on folk-music collecting.
The first movement, taken at a gently rocking tempo, offered a superb blend of rich tone colours from the quartet, which softened the somewhat acerbic harmonies; "peaceful life" it may have been, but dull it was not.
I must say that "joy" was not my first thought as the second movement unfolded in its almost brutal fashion. Forceful and rhythmically driven, ensemble was, despite several fierce accelerations and decelerations, razor-sharp and the scurrying coda was a study in precision and half-tones.
The last movement was sparse and bleak, the viola and cello pizzicatos giving a distinct air of finality, but no consolation, to the close.
The Emily Carr Quartet go from strength to strength.
If you missed the first two performances (this was the second) of this programme, you have one last chance to catch it, at 7:30 on Tuesday October 30, at St. Mary of the Incarnation, Metchosin.
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