Mannes: Orion Quartet Performs Stravinsky, Webern, Hadyn and Schumann

The Orion Quartet is a phenomenal chamber ensemble and once again proved their virtuosity last evening in performance at Mannes where they serve as Quartet in Residence. The program was diverse and represented a wide range of musical styles.

The first piece on the program was Stravinsky's Concertino, a short piece not often performed that was written by the composer in France in 1920 at the request of Alfred Pochon, first violinist of the Flonzaley Quartet.  In his autobiography, Stravinsky described the music as "a free sonata allegro with a definitely concertante part for the first violin."

The Stravinsky was followed by Anton Webern's String Quartet, Op. 28, another brief work and one that I found highly enjoyable.  This was the last piece of chamber music that Webern wrote and the last work to be published in his lifetime.  The composition was atonal and made use of the twelve-tone technique.  A music teacher seated beside me compared Webern's spare compositions to abstract paintings with notes placed "here and there."  I found the description very apt.

The first half of the program concluded with Haydn's String Quartet in G minor, Op. 20, No. 3, written in 1772 when the composer was already middle aged.  This is one of those seminal compositions that define the very core of the classical music repertoire and one that helped earn the composer the title "Father of the String Quartet."  As the Wikipedia article notes:

"'This cannot be overstated,' writes Ron Drummond. 'The six string quartets of Opus 20 are as important in the history of music, and had as radically a transforming effect on the very field of musical possibility itself, as Beethoven's Third Symphony would 33 years later.' And Sir Donald Tovey writes of the quartets, 'Every page of the six quartets of op. 20 is of historic and aesthetic importance... there is perhaps no single or sextuple opus in the history of instrumental music which has achieved so much.'"

The second half of the program was given over to a performance of Schumann's String Quartet No. 2 in F, Op. 41, No. 2.  Although the chamber music Schumann wrote for string instruments has never received the recognition given his piano compositions or symphonies, this was a thoroughly satisfying and enjoyable piece that last evening was played to perfection by the ensemble and elicited a great round of applause from the audience at its conclusion.