Mannes: Orion Quartet Performs Schumann, Bartók and Haydn

Yesterday evening the Orion Quartet performed the second of their four annual recitals at Mannes.  The works performed were all mainstays of the repertoire by three of music's most famous and influential composers - Schumann, Bartók and Haydn.

The program opened with Schumann's String Quartet in F major, No. 2, Op. 41, No. 2 (1842).  Although no one would deny that Schumann's quartets, particularly the No. 2 played here, are masterpieces, all three were written in the shadow of those composed earlier by Beethoven and Schubert; and it is for that reason that they most probably do not receive as much respect as they should.  The No. 2 is deservedly the best known of the three and a great chamber work by any standard.  The deeply reflective Allegro vivace that opens the work is a perfect expression of the introspective Romantic temperament that Schumann embodied so well both in his work and in his life.  Following this movement comes the adroit Andante quasi variazioni.  Variations are a genre in themselves, a form virtually every great composer has pursued.  Beethoven worked at them assiduously throughout his career from his earliest days in Vienna (I recently wrote of a recital by Timothy Eddy and Gilbert Kalish where the 1801 Seven Variations on Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, WoO 46 were performed) to the late period Diabelli Variations, the composer's greatest work for piano.  Schumann here provided a worthy followup to those of the master, the influence of whose late quartets can be felt throughout the entire length of the present work.

The Schumann was followed by Bartók's String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114 (1939).  I was surprised to see this work on the program as the group had only just performed it here at Mannes last March.  I reviewed my post on that recital and felt my comments applied just as well to this performance as they did to the last.

After intermission, the program concluded with Haydn's String Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5, Hob. III/79 (1797) in a reprise of a performance the Quartet had given with the Chamber Music Society in January.  The ensemble had already played at their September recital at Mannes works from Hadyn's Op. 20 and Op. 33, and the performance of the present work enabled the audience to better trace the composer's development of the genre at a later stage in his career (the Op. 76 were composed some fifteen years after the Op. 33).  This was a fascinating glimpse into the creative processes of "the father of the string quartet."  The six pieces constitute the last full set of quartets to be composed by Haydn and would be of importance to musicologists for that fact alone.  By the time he had completed them, the form of the quartet as we recognize it today had been well established and would serve as a model for Mozart, Beethoven and future composers.  But even without their historical significance, the Op. 76 works still deserve attention as they are among the finest examples of the genre.  Despite the nickname "Largo" sometimes given it after the notation for its second movement, the quartet itself is a bright fast moving work about eighteen minutes in length that seems over almost before it had begun so quickly does the time pass.  Few works by Haydn or any other composer are so thoroughly enjoyable.

The Orion Quartet worked together flawlessly to give as precise a reading as possible of these seminal works.  At the conclusion of the recital, the wildly enthusiastic audience gave the ensemble a standing ovation.