This is an online only review - no other format is available.
Permission is granted to print and distribute this review in any format.

Students (and others) hear transparency

"Probing" left to internists

Tuesday, August 2, 2005
Paul M. Somers

American String Teachers Association (NJ) and Kean University Music Department present the Shanghai String Quartet: Weigang Li and Yi-Wen Jiang (violins), Honggang Li (viola), and Nicholas Tzavaras (cello). J. Haydn: Quartet in D, op. 20, no. 4; Beethoven: Quartet in F, op. 135; Ravel: Quartet in F. Wilkins Theater, Kean University, Union.

"The Shanghai String Quartet made a great point before they even played one note of the concert," guitarist Christopher Kenniff told me after the concert. He was the Kean University affiliated artist who is associated with the New Jersey wing of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA). The school and ASTA jointly presented a "mini-camp" (Sunday through Thursday) for young chamber music players, and the Tuesday evening concert by the world-renowned Shanghai was a lesson by example, as it were. The concert was at 7:30 pm, but Kenniff reported to the students during dinner that the Quartet had arrived at 2:00 pm and immediately settled into a three hour rehearsal.

According to Kenniff, jaws dropped. In this tangible manner the kids perceived the utter intensity of professional level players. According to Margaret Zufall Roberts, a violist who is also involved in the running of the "camp", the students had already been very involved in practice, since the dorm rooms are ready-made practice rooms. "I've had to go up and down the halls every evening telling the kids that they must stop practicing and go to sleep," she said. But Kenniff's revelation of top pros doing so much work was eye-opening to most high-schoolers.

The list of string chamber works being learned by the students was impressive. We noteiced among the faculty such luminaries as bassist Linda McKnight (Montclair State University and Manhattan School of Music). Also representing the bass world was Anthony Scelba, the chair of the Kean music department. In addition to him and Kenniff, the University music department was also represented that evening by composer Matt Halper.

With the inexplicable demise of Rutgers SummerFest a few years ago, the concerts presented by such smaller organizations as the ASTA/Kean partnership attract many listeners. We met audience members from down near New Brunswick who made the trek to the border of Union and Elizabeth to hear major artists in the summer. We can only encourage other small presenters or teaching camps to get the word out ever more effectively (this concert was advertised in Chinese-language newspapers, for instance).

There were no printed programs, so cellist Nicholas Tzavaras announced the works and said a few words about each.

The concert itself was marked by the kind of sonic transparency one hopes for in a chamber concert. "Allowing the music to speak for itself" is not as easily accomplished as it sounds. It suggests that the music has to be heard completely, that no didactic point of view will be imposed, though an understanding of appropriate style will prevail. In short, no so-called "probing" performance was delivered - just good solid music making.

That the concert was in front of a bunch of students and older chamber music fans seems to have brought forth some great programming from the players. Haydn's quartet uses the same di-di-di-dah rhythm as Beethoven uses most famously in his Symphony no. 5. So Beethoven, in this case his last quartet which is in F and is tightly organized, was a logical outgrowth. Then Beethoven 's last movement has a *pizzicato passage, which along with the tight organization and even the key led easily to Ravel's only Quartet which boasts those same hallmarks.

But the real stitching holding it all together was the light approach. Nowhere did the players dig in with harsh attacks. Indeed, more remarkable was the willingness to invest Haydn's slow movement with a romantic post-*Joachim vibrato. The variations, which look forward to the variations Beethoven works in his slow movement, are increasingly intense so the vibrato heightened the effect.

In Haydn's Minuet (or Scherzo) we again had a foreshadowing as the written-in accents create meters which run counter to expectations. This is, of course, a technique often used by Beethoven including in the comparable movement of this concert's op. 135.

Beethoven's last full quartet is a work whose high seriousness seems to actually be tongue-in-cheek (except, as in Haydn, for the slow movement). All the little motivic snippets flying around are fun, rather Beethoven's version of færie. That they are completely germane to the music is obvious, but the idea that we are therefore to take them as oracular utterances is belied by their humorous context.

By the time we have traversed the earlier movements even the *"Muß es sein? Es muß sein!" (Must it be? It must be!) business of the final movement is reduced to something less than seriousness. The penultimate passage with its pizzicato mix of playfulness and delicacy proved to be an excellent way to send the audience out for a breather.

The Ravel Quartet shone with an unaffected luminosity. We could hear ever so clearly the details of motivic development unwinding their pastel threads. Never were we subjected to some garish in-your-face thematic assertion as if the players had to brag to the audience that they had noticed something special. With all the Gallic "flux within the moment" so exquisitely laid before us, it was no wonder that the performers were brought back to the stage time and again. They had clearly not expected to play an encore, so one player had to run off stage to get some music when they decided to respond to the long applause with an extra.

It proved to be a movement from Charles Tomlinson Griffes' Three Sketches for String Quartet based on Indian themes. This is a treatment of Native American melody in an early modernist manner. The original ideas are not only stated but developed as only a fine composer like Griffes could. If ever there was a teaser, this was it. I for one hope to hear the Quartet play the complete work sometime in the future.

This music was so effectively played that a standing ovation was the result. The Shanghais took one more bow and the evening was over.

---

Return to CNJS Home Page | Return to Reviews Table of Contents