I went on Friday afternoon to Paul Hall to hear the first half of the annual Juilliard String Quartet Seminar Recital. The event was described as follows on the school's website:
"Each year The Juilliard School hosts a weeklong seminar to foster the artistic growth of pre-formed, pre-professional string quartets. Through intensive coaching and mentoring with members of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as interaction with other participating quartets, students are able to refine their artistry in a stimulating artistic environment. The results are displayed in these final seminar recitals."
The program opened with the String Quartet No. 61 in D minor, Op. 76, No. 2 (1797) by Franz Joseph Haydn. The piece is nicknamed "the Fifths" for the widely spaced intervals played by the first violin in the opening bars. It was written while Haydn was still resident at Esterházy and was the last full set of quartets he completed. While perhaps not as groundbreaking as the Op. 20 or the Op. 33, these six quartets still represented a milestone in the development of the genre and helped formalize its structure for future generations of composers. Haydn was, of course, known as "the father of the string quartet" and I was lucky enough this season to have heard a number of performances of his works performed by the Orion Quartet, widely acknowledged as authorities on Haydn, including one of the No. 5 from this same set. Those performances, as well as Friday's, have helped deepen my appreciation of Haydn's genius and his ability to innovate within a genre until he had perfected its form. It's strange to think that without the groundwork laid by Haydn, Beethoven's late quartets might not exist, at least not in the form we now know them. On Friday, the work was expertly performed by the Cordova Quartet consisting of Andy Liang and Roseminna Watson (violins), Blake Turner (viola) and Matthew Kufchak (cello).
The second work on the program was the String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (1909) by Béla Bartók. The piece was written shortly after the First Violin Concerto and, though the composer had recently gotten married to his first wife, he was apparently still suffering while composing the quartet from his unrequited love for the violinist Stefi Geyer. When writing to her, he in fact described the quartet's first movement as a "funeral dirge." More importantly, the work displays, especially in its final movement, Bartók's early use of the Hungarian folk themes that were to prove the key to the development of his modernist style. It's much easier to see in youthful works such as this and the Piano Quintet (1903) the manner in which the composer first began adapting these motifs to his own form of expression. The work was performed by the Calliope String Quartet consisting of Tianyang Gao and Julia Glenn (violins), Molly Goldman (viola) and Hélène Werner (cello). All the musicians were extremely talented, but I was especially impressed by the virtuoso performance given by Tianyang Gao on first violin.
The recital lasted less than an hour and had no intermission. The second half of the program was to be played that same the evening and and was to feature a performance of Bartók's Fourth Quartet. I had already heard that piece performed earlier this month by the same musicians who were to be present Friday evening and who have now named themselves the 412 Quartet, and had thought their rendition truly excellent. It's a shame both the Bartók quartets could not have been played at the same performance so that the audience could have better followed the evolution of the composer's style over the nineteen year period that elapsed between the creation of the two works.
This was the one of the last recitals I'll hear this season at Juilliard, and while at Paul Hall I was struck again by what an incredible resource the school represents to those with a love of great music. All season I've heard top level musicians give exceptional performances of some of the most important works in the chamber repertoire. I definitely feel privileged to have attended these recitals and am deeply grateful to Juilliard for having made them available to the general public.
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