Concert review: Spokane String Quartet’s Sunday audience rivals the Super Bowl’s in terms of enthusiasm
The large, active crowd flowing into the Fox Theater on Sunday afternoon might well have been taken for a group of football fans waiting for the Super Bowl game to start.
If they were, though, they would have been disappointed to see not a giant big screen appearing before them, but the members of the Spokane String Quartet.
They were not disappointed, however. Neither did they elect to miss The Game because they wished to experience something less exciting, more contemplative and cerebral. Their loud clapping, shouting and whistling when the group finished playing proved otherwise, and this is why: a string quartet executes high-pressure plays and maneuvers, like quarterbacks and wide receivers, and they do it not every few minutes, but every few seconds.
The music they play demands the highest level of professional competence, and every note is clearly audible to everyone in the theater. One slip of the finger, one awkward stroke of the bow, one phrase that is late, and everyone knows it. If the energy or focus of the group is allowed to flag for a minute or two, it can tarnish the impression left by the entire concert. The cheers that surrounded Mateusz Wolski (First Violin), Amanda Howard-Phillips (Second Violin), Jeanette Wee-Yang (Viola), Helen Byrne (Cello) and Michal Palzewicz (Guest Artist, Cello) proved that all the perfect notes, all the immaculate ensemble, all the varied and dramatic colors, had made their mark. Not several goals, but thousands had been scored in 90 minutes.
The afternoon’s program consisted of three works: The String Quartet No 7 in F# minor Op. 108 (1960) of Dmitri Shostakovich, the String Quartet Op. 18 No 3 in D major (1800) of Ludwig van Beethoven, and the String Quintet in A major Op. 39 (1892) of Alexander Glazunov.
Though it is included as number 3 in the six quartets Beethoven published as his Opus 18, the D major quartet was actually the first he wrote. It would be wrong, however, to assume that it is the work of a beginner. By this point in his career, Beethoven had published two very considerable piano concertos, eight piano sonatas, some of which broke new ground in music history, and numerous miscellaneous instrumental works. It is not, surprising, then, that the D major Quartet shows such mastery of construction and subtlety of conception, or that it places such heavy demands on the players.
The first movement of the Quartet is a masterpiece of compression. Passages of very different character follow one another in rapid succession, often without transition. Lyrical passages abutt playful, dance-like sections, which become suddenly wistful or satirical. Motives that are initiated by one instrument are handed off to another, to be echoed by a third player, and so on. Still, Beethoven maintains the impression of a steady through-line, linking these disparate moods and ideas together. Haydn established the template for such composition in a string quartet, and Beethoven’s Op. 18 No 3 shows his mastery of this template, as well as his determination to advance beyond it.
Imparting the individual character suitable to each section, while preserving the sense of a broader arc reaching over the full 25-minute extent of the work, is a challenge that only the best ensembles can meet. The Spokane String Quartet showed themselves fully equal to the challenge Beethoven laid down, as they did to that created by Soviet composer Shostakovich in the seventh of his 15 string quartets.
A lifelong student and admirer of the works of Beethoven, Shostakovich incorporates a great number of Beethovenian elements into this work, the most significant of which is Beethoven’s creation of a spiritual narrative as a means of integrating a long, diverse work. Though Shostakovich’s Seventh Quartet is not long – roughly only 15 minutes – it is highly concentrated, and thus manages quite clearly to trace a complex spiritual journey from contentment to disquiet to loneliness (the work commemorates the death of the composer’s wife) to despair, and then, through determined recommitment to his art, to resignation and acceptance.
In depicting a spiritual progress true to the realities of his life in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Shostakovich requires his players to make use of instrumental techniques that would be wholly out of place in an early work of Beethoven. Furthermore, bitter sarcasm and icy fear, which play such an important part not only in his Seventh Quartet but throughout Shostakovich’s body of work, are quite foreign to the culture of the Enlightenment. The ability of the Spokane String Quartet to move so seamlessly and convincingly from one cultural universe to another is a constant source of wonder and gratitude. The eerie stillness they achieved in the second movement’s confrontation with death and the fierce energy with which they plowed through the dense fugal writing of the third movement left a lasting impression on all who heard them and removed any trace of remorse at having missed The Big Game.
Augmented by the pinpoint accuracy and great beauty of tone commanded by Michal Palzewicz – a lifelong friend of Wolski – the group put this same combination of skill and sympathy to bear on the final work of the program, the A major String Quintet of Glazunov. One regrets to say that they did not pay the same dividends as they did when applied to the foregoing works of Beethoven and Shostakovich. The fault lay not in the understanding of writing for stringed instruments, which was masterful, nor in his academic grasp of harmony, but simply in the utter vacuity and banality of inspiration. It seems that he had nothing whatever of interest to say, and that his motivation was confined to a desire to demonstrate his competence as a composer in order to achieve advancement in the Tsarist cultural bureaucracy – a goal he achieved.
Deprived of a single idea or passage of real beauty to fasten on, the audience was apparently content to sit back and enjoy the dazzling variety of Wolski’s bowings, the gleaming mahogany of Howard-Phillips’ tone, the passionate exchanges between Byrne and Palcewicz … and the sheer elegance with which Wee-Yang does absolutely everything.
Thus, the critic was left with no real cause for complaint.