ionreviews

ionreviews Music, Art, Literature—the good stuff
Eye on Arts

18.4.04

Stars and Strings, cont. — by Jens Laurson
Contributed by jfl at 1:11 PM | Link to this article
Among the papers in Schoenberg's estate, a note was found that proclaimed: "A great man lives in this country—a composer. He has solved the problem of how to stay true to oneself and still learn. He reacts to neglect with disdain. He needs neither accept nor reject (snub) criticism. His name is Ives." That was of course very true, not the least because Ives had a well-run insurance agency and was a millionaire for most of his life. Not only did he not have to care about criticism, he didn't even write music in the last 35 years of his life. It was his first string quartet that was the sandwiched "modern" piece on the program: not really modern, as it is some 110 years old, originating from Charles Ives's student years at Yale. (Was it just me, or did the cello suddenly sound full and round? Am I going insane or are/were my tin ears playing tricks on me?)

American hymns and Bach peek through the first movement quite a bit. This came as no surprise after reading the always-excellent program notes by Tomás C. Hernandez, who tells us in them that the first movement, composed independently from all the other movements, started out as an organ fugue for a counterpoint class. (Indeed, all four movements may have started out as works for organ.) Ives, a devout Puritan, studied under the arch-conservative Horatio Parker, whose influence comes through in these four movement-pieces. There is apparently a dispute as to whether the first movement even belongs to the string quartet and not rather to the Fourth Symphony for which it was appropriated. Alas, it is an interesting and fine piece of music, and I was glad to hear it from the Leipzig Quartet, even if it violated Ives's intentions.

Quoting from all these sources that I am not familiar with, I may have missed a good part of the wit of the quartet, but it holds its own as "pure music" just as well. Perhaps a bit on the easy side, but that is quite fine. There were musical ellipses, a little Viennese flavored jest, a tiny Mozart allusion, and just a hint of "care-me-not" thorns present in that music that bobs back and forth between venturing into denser sounds and its straightforward musical quotations. Towards the last third it got very entertaining, indeed. Splendid, even. The audience, more often used to far thornier beasts at this part of a concert (think Hoiby or Babbitt) was likely grateful, as the reasonably excited applause afterwards showed. Ives is familiar territory to the Leipzig String Quartet. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviewed their fine recording of both of Ives's string quartets as well as other, smaller works for string quartet and piano, just last year, as part of their very extensive and impressive discography with the audiophile label MD&G.

Little needs to be said about the Brahms Clarinet Quintet. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of chamber music ever composed, and hearing it twice within weeks (just recently at the National Academy of Sciences with the Debussy String Quartet) does not detract one iota from that. Ricardo Morales joined the Leipzig String Quartet that night. The playing was perhaps a little less lyrical than it had been in the French/Russian hands, but technically, as was the entire evening, beyond reproach. Best just to sit back and enjoy with a smile. Enjoy as I did, it must be said that the Brahms was evidently not their strength, and the Quintet did at times come across as routine and even somewhat tedious. Shy of the luscious thing it can be, but with plenty of merit, still. Most everyone else seemed not to have shared my opinion about the Brahms being lackluster, and the enthusiastic applause elicited an encore.

It took a while for the encore to get under way, because the notes could not be procured by Mr. Morales, whose nice tone on the instrument was better communicated in the third movement of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, coincidentally the same encore that the Debussy String Quartet gave. It was much softer, consoling, indeed. Those members of the audience who had left early deserved to miss it, those who innocently thought they could beat the line at the loo were to be pitied. An extraordinarily long pause after the end of the piece was a refreshing antidote to the tyranny of overzealous clappers and permanent standing ovations. That alone deserved standing ovations.

Charles Ives, Musik für Streichquartett, Leipziger Streichquartett, Steffen Schleiermacher, Yeon-Hee Kwak	Emerson String Quartet, Ives string quartets
Leipziger Streichquartett, Mendelssohn, vol.4, String Octet and Quartet (1823)	Leipziger Streichquartett, Brahms Quintet and Quartet

Other recordings by the Leipzig String Quartet from Amazon:

Back to main page.

Want to keep reading? Go to the Ionarts Archives.