Mannes: Orion Quartet Performs Beethoven and Dvořák

It was snowing on Friday evening and the sidewalks on the Upper West Side were coated with slush, but the Orion Quartet still drew a full audience as it performed the fourth in this season's series of recitals at Mannes.  There were only two pieces on the program on this occasion but both were full-length masterpieces by two of the nineteenth century's most important composers - Beethoven and Dvořák.

In the first half, the ensemble, with Todd Phillips on first violin, played Beethoven's Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127 (1824).  While all of Beethoven's late period works can with some justification be considered works of genius, none are more deserving of this description than his final series of quartets.  In them, he summed up all he had learned of music, and indeed of life, in the course of his long career.  They were in a very real sense his final testament.  Though the original commission, received in 1822 from Prince Nikolas Galitzin, was for only three string quartets, so great was Beethoven's enthusiasm for the project that he eventually wrote five.  Of these, the first of the set to be completed was the Op. 127.  Though in this work the composer adhered to the traditional four-movement structure (the only other in the series to do so was the last, the Op. 135), Beethoven had originally considered two additional movements, one between the first and second and the other between the third and fourth.  The heart of the piece was the powerful second movement adagio with its six variations.

After a brief intermission, the evening closed with Dvořák's Quartet in G major, Op. 106 (1895), this time with Daniel Phillips playing first violin.  Although this quartet was given a later opus number than the Op. 105, which Dvořák had begun while still living in New York, it was the Op. 106 that was completed first.  For the most part, the quartet is an exuberant work that reflects the composer's joy at once again finding himself home in Europe.  Only in the second movement is there any sense of darkness as the mood turns to one of deep melancholy.  There may have been a personal reason behind this sadness.  1895 had witnessed the death of Dvořák's sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová (née Čermáková), who had also been the composer's unrequited first love and there may have been some reflection of this loss behind the adagio's poignancy.

This was the last recital to be given by the Orion Quartet at Mannes's concert hall on 85th Street.  The school will be moving downtown at the end of the semester and relocating to the New School's facilities on West 13th Street.  While it is no doubt more practical to have all the music school's facilities together at one spot, the closure is still a great loss for the community.  I don't know if the Quartet will continue its recital series at the new location, but there was a palpable sense of nostalgia among the audience members, myself included, as the evening drew to a close.  As I've said often, the Orion Quartet is one of the world's premier chamber ensembles and the performances they've given here on the West Side have been a great gift to those who have a passion for classical music and who have been able to appreciate the high quality of the performances they've been offered.